OpenAI and Anthropic Poach Trump Officials to Navigate Supply Chain and Export Controls

OpenAI and Anthropic have hired at least five former Trump administration officials this year across senior strategy, national security, and board positions. Anthropic appointed former deputy White House chief of staff Chris Liddell to its board of directors and named former OSTP advisor Sihao Huang as head of frontier compute strategy. OpenAI’s hires include Thomas Lind from the Office of the National Cyber Director and Dean Ball from the OSTP, integrating them into the company's national security policy and strategic futures teams. The hiring surge follows a U.S. appeals court upholding a Pentagon designation of Anthropic as a supply chain risk in September, highlighting the regulatory leverage Washington holds over AI infrastructure. Anthropic's political maneuvers run parallel to its massive physical expansion, which includes a reported $45B cloud deal with neocloud Nscale to secure model training compute. "Frontier AI companies are aware that the Trump administration has a lot of levers over their business, from federal procurement and supply-chain designations to export controls and everything in between, and that it's willing to use them." — Michelle Nie Duncan