OpenAI and Anthropic hire former Trump administration officials to strengthen government relations

On October 9 that, according to CNBC, AI companies OpenAI and Anthropic are hiring former Trump administration officials for executive and strategic roles to strengthen ties with Washington, aiming to address the growing perception of frontier technologies as national security issues and the rising demand for regulation.

This year, Anthropic has appointed former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Chris Liddell to its board of directors and hired Sihao Huang, former Senior Policy Advisor for AI and Emerging Technologies at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), as Head of Frontier Compute Strategy. Meanwhile, OpenAI has hired Thomas Lind, former head of AI policy at the Office of the National Cyber Director (ONCD), to lead cybersecurity and strategic risk affairs for its national security policy team. It has also appointed Dean Ball, who helped draft the American AI Initiative, as Head of Strategic Foresight, and former U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer Peter Bowman-Davis to oversee model training and hardware engineering. Both organizations are currently continuing to recruit for multiple roles focused on government affairs and political engagement.