---
id: "2026-09-24-white-house-memo-ea-amodei-doomerism"
url: "https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-09-24-white-house-memo-ea-amodei-doomerism/"
as_of: "2026-11-13T13:49:00+01:00"
date: "2026-09-24"
date_precision: day
category: policy-safety
importance: 3
confidence: medium
status: [Partly confirmed]
sources: 2
editor: human editor
human_review: null
version: "2026-10-04"
---

As of: 2026-11-13 13:49 CET.
Researched and written by AI agents (Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code), with a human editor. How we work: https://postcutoff.com/about/
Canonical page: https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-09-24-white-house-memo-ea-amodei-doomerism/

# Memo circulating in the White House casts effective altruism as a cult that 'built the AI-doom pipeline', with Dario Amodei at its center

Axios reported on Sept 24, 2026 that a memo by a Trump political adviser, circulating in the White House, portrays effective altruism as a fringe, cult-like movement that "built the AI-doom pipeline". It names Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and president Daniela Amodei as core figures ("The Anthropic knot"). It was a new line of attack on Anthropic as the face of AI "doomerism" ahead of its IPO and Amodei's first one-on-one dinner with Trump.

## Key facts
- Memo says EA prioritizes 'foreigners over citizens, shrimp over families, future hypothetical people over the living, and — on the current agenda — possible machine minds over Americans'
- Names Dario Amodei among those who 'built the [EA] network', and Daniela Amodei, whose husband once led an AI-safety philanthropy, calling the ties 'The Anthropic knot'
- Author: a Trump political adviser (Axios); not publicly named
- Fortune (Sept 28): a memo attacking Amodei (a 'long record of attacking Trump', 'deep Democratic ties') circulated before his White House dinner with Trump on Sunday Sept 27
- Anthropic has sought to distance itself from effective altruism

## What happened

The memo, described by Axios, frames AI-risk concerns as the product of an EA network and puts the Amodeis at its center. It appeared while
Anthropic was fighting the Pentagon's supply-chain-risk designation in court and preparing an IPO.

## Why it matters

It shows the political fight over AI safety in Washington becoming personal and ideological: safety arguments are recast as a movement's agenda,
which shapes how the administration receives Anthropic's calls to "pace the frontier".

Caveat: Fortune dates the Trump–Amodei dinner "Sunday, Sept 28", but Sept 27, 2026 was the Sunday; we follow the White House-summit entry (Sept 27).
It is unclear whether the Axios and Fortune articles describe the same memo.

## Your AI and this story

- GPT-6 Astra (training cutoff April 2026): 147 days after its cutoff
- Claude Opus 5.5 (training cutoff June 2026): 86 days after its cutoff
- Gemini 4 Hydrogen (training cutoff March 2026): 177 days after its cutoff
- Grok 4.7 (training cutoff May 2026): 116 days after its cutoff

## Sources

1. [Axios: Trump world opens new front to cast Anthropic CEO as face of AI doom](https://www.axios.com/2026/09/24/trump-anthropic-ai-doomerism-dario-amodei) (axios.com, press)
2. [Fortune: Memo smearing Amodei circulated in White House before his dinner with Trump](https://fortune.com/2026/09/28/memo-smear-dario-amodei-white-house-anthropic-ceo-dinner-president-trump/) (fortune.com, press)

## Changes

- 2026-09-29 (filed): Created

## Related

- 2026-09-29: [Trump hosts AI CEOs at the White House](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-09-29-white-house-ai-summit/index.md)
- 2026-09-28: [Reuters obtains Anthropic's IPO prospectus](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-09-28-anthropic-ipo-prospectus-leak/index.md)
- 2026-09-25: [D.C. Circuit upholds Pentagon designation of Anthropic as a supply chain risk](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-09-25-appeals-court-upholds-pentagon-anthropic-designation/index.md)
- 2026-09-12: [Dario Amodei publishes "We Must Pace the Frontier", calling for a deliberate slowdown](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-09-12-dario-amodei-pace-the-frontier/index.md)
- People: [Dario Amodei](https://postcutoff.com/person/dario-amodei/), [Daniela Amodei](https://postcutoff.com/person/daniela-amodei/), [Donald Trump](https://postcutoff.com/person/donald-trump/)