Three Labs With a Plan and A Memorandum - by Zvi Mowshowitz

Don't Worry About the Vase

SubscribeSign in

Three Labs With a Plan and A Memorandum

Zvi Mowshowitz<br>Jun 09, 2026

42

Share

The big story today is the release of Claude Fable 5, the version of Claude Mythos that Anthropic believes they can safely distribute to the people. You should absolutely be switching over to that model and trying it out. But as always, this blog does not rush into commenting on a new model until we have a few days to play around with it and see what our new baby can (and can’t) do. This will be no exception, and coverage of Fable in earnest will start Friday or Monday.<br>Today I instead bring you several related stories around policies and plans for AI, that came out before the Fable announcement.<br>First we have the Administration giving us an AI memorandum, that I read as an attempt to legally implement ‘Anthropic is fired forever and we will use any models we have for whatever we want no matter what’ combined with some good government and diffusion plans.<br>Second, OpenAI has come out with a plan for how to ensure AGI benefits everyone. It includes a very strong call for international coordination among key actors to ensure the ability to slow down AI development in the name of doing it safely. This echoes the same call made previously by Anthropic and by Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind. There is broad support for the idea of preparing for a potential coordinated slowdown.<br>The rest of the OpenAI proposal here is then concerned with the opposite problem, of concentration of power, and concentrating its rhetoric on that danger and AI’s promise. Notice that the document uses only ‘catastrophic’ risk rather than existential or extinction, and it does not take seriously the idea the need to retain control in the hands of humans, only fearing the wrong humans will command these AIs. And OpenAI’s plan is, very explicitly, AI to go into recursive self-improvement.<br>I appreciate the honesty, but the inherent contradictions remain, and are not addressed, nor is the failure to address them itself addressed, and so on.<br>This leads into Joshua Achiam’s claim on Twitter about the difference in philosophy between OpenAI and Anthropic, where Anthropic employees report he is miscategorizing their views, but where he makes a good directional point.

An AI Memorandum

This one is entitled National Security Presidential Memorandum/NSPM-11.<br>This seems to be a combination of an actual Anthropic ban including on subcontractors, with a potential 1 year delay, a statement of allowing all (legal?) use, and some good governance instructions including adaptation of tech from multiple vendors.<br>As always Section 1 declares principles.<br>President Trump: Under my Administration, the United States can and will responsibly accelerate the use of AI across intelligence and warfighting domains in line with American values.<br>… with full confidence that those tools will be available when they matter most.

Section 2 lays out four pillars: Adoption, Adaptation, Assurance and Accountability.<br>Adoption and Adaption are straight up good.<br>Accountability is good. The problem here is via negativa. AI use must be consistent with the Constitution, lawful and authorized, and the responsible people are responsible for that. Great. But as we’ve been over many times, what the national security state thinks is legal, and even what their courts will say is legal, is rather broad. There are limits, but there aren’t that many limits, so combined with Assurance you can be assured they will do pretty much anything they feel like doing.<br>Assurance is the one to watch.<br>The national security enterprise shall assure that all AI technologies adopted are designed to be reliable, robust, steerable, and controllable, and that they operate, in accordance with applicable laws, government policies, and guidance.<br>To protect American warfighters, the national security enterprise shall ensure, through contractual clauses or other means, that no commercial entity or adversary possesses the capability to prevent use of, disable or degrade, or materially modify without Federal Government knowledge and approval, an AI system that our men and women depend on for their missions.<br>In addition, rigorous security and functionality measures, including testing, evaluation, validation, and verification, shall be implemented to assure the appropriate confidentiality, integrity, reliability, availability, and interoperability of AI systems across the national security enterprise.

The first and third paragraphs should be uncontroversial, although without implementation it is cheap talk. The devil is in paragraph two, where no other entity can, without knowledge and approval, ‘prevent use of, disable, or degrade, or materially modify’ any AI system that ‘our men and women depend upon’ which could be interpreted to include a wide range of systems, including civilian ones.<br>As in, once you turn this model over to...