Anthropic Says It Does Not Support Ban on Models With Open Weights

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said the company has never supported a ban on models with open weights, in a company blog post. The post was published on July 27, 2026, after reports that some US officials were considering limits on Chinese models with open weights.

Amodei wrote that models with open weights can benefit businesses, developers, and researchers when they do not have dangerous capabilities. He said a ban on their use by US companies would not address his main national security concerns, including the possibility that authoritarian governments build more powerful models or use AI for military and surveillance purposes.

He also said models with open weights can present higher misuse risks than closed models because their safeguards can be removed and their use is difficult to monitor after release. He argued that banning US business use would not stop bad actors, who are unlikely to be legitimate US companies.

Amodei said Anthropic supports three measures instead: restricting powerful chips and chipmaking equipment from reaching China, targeting industrial scale distillation operations, and requiring safety testing for all sufficiently capable models before release, whether they are open or closed.