---
id: "2026-10-21-amodei-race-to-the-top-reply-calvin"
url: "https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-10-21-amodei-race-to-the-top-reply-calvin/"
as_of: "2026-10-21T14:07:00+02:00"
date: "2026-10-21"
date_precision: day
category: policy-safety
importance: 3
confidence: high
status: [Confirmed]
sources: 2
editor: human editor
human_review: null
version: null
---

As of: 2026-10-21 14:07 CEST.
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/2026-10-21-amodei-race-to-the-top-reply-calvin/

# Amodei defends 'race to the top' against Calvin's critique

Full title: Dario Amodei answers Nathan Calvin's critique: defends Anthropic's 'race to the top', lists nine costly safety decisions, admits mishandled communications

On Oct 21, 2026 (Oct 20 US time) Dario Amodei posted a long reply on X to Encode's Nathan Calvin, who had argued that Anthropic's actions over the past year look like a company trying mainly to win the race to superintelligence. Amodei said Anthropic's strategy has always been a "race to the top" that requires being at the frontier, listed nine safety decisions that he says cost the company commercially, and agreed that its communications on three of Calvin's items (a letter to Congress, a "second place" remark and the leaked draft bill) were handled badly. He said "I take responsibility."

## Key facts
- Calvin's post (Oct 19, ~399k views) listed nine actions: an in-house chip team; >$500B in compute deals; Claude 'leading' 26% of AI-development tasks by August (0% in March); heavy internal AI R&D compute; RSP v3 dropping unilateral commitments to slow or stop; a 'frontier compliance framework' with no binding rules on internal deployment; a letter to Congress calling Claude's hacking incidents a 'misconfiguration'; 'you can't do safety from second place'; and the draft bill pre-empting state law
- Amodei's reply (Oct 21 02:26 UTC, ~664k views) lists: (1) role in SB 53, arguing for a stronger version; (2) strict bio classifiers despite false positives, after 'concerning results in bio uplift trials' and blocked bioweapon attempts; (3) holding Mythos-class models (first had in February) back until June for cyber safeguards, 'likely' sacrificing 'a significant chunk of a several-month model lead'; (4) calling in June for government power to block model releases; (5) the events of February 2026; (6) chip export-control advocacy; (7) being the first and only frontier company to restrict sales to PRC-controlled companies; (8) reports and model cards; (9) the 5% public benefit fund
- On Calvin's items 1–4: 'simply examples of what it means to compete at the frontier, and we stand by them'. He added that Anthropic is 'nearing' the point where AI-driven acceleration gets 'fast enough that it is hard for safety to keep up', which drives its thinking on 'pacing'
- On items 7–9: they fall under 'rhetoric or policy communication that wasn't carefully written or resulting from fast-changing circumstances'; 'Anthropic is over 5,000 people'; 'I am of course the CEO, and I take responsibility'
- On RSP v3 (item 5): the old RSP created effortful requirements that were not very important for safety; the 2023 RSP was described as 'an early iteration'. On the FCF (item 6): 'I promise to look into it further'
- Closing: 'I will have more to say soon about how we are going to further live our values in this moment of rapid change'
- Coverage: Techmeme ('admits mishandling a draft AI bill'), Business Insider, Fox News ('Anthropic CEO defends record on safety, sales to China')

## What happened

The exchange grew out of criticism of Anthropic's leaked draft federal AI bill. Calvin, a lawyer at Encode, wrote a long post asking
"what is Anthropic?" and argued that its recent actions fit a company racing to superintelligence with safety second. Amodei answered in a
~11,000-character post: he defended the strategy, listed costly decisions and accepted fault on communications. Both posts were read in
full through api.fxtwitter.com.

## Why it matters

It is the most detailed public defence of Anthropic's strategy by its CEO in the run-up to the IPO. It also contains new first-hand claims:
Mythos-class models existed in February, Anthropic saw concerning bio-uplift results, and it is "nearing" the point where safety struggles
to keep pace with AI-driven acceleration. He promised further announcements.

## Your AI and this story

- GPT-6 Astra (training cutoff April 2026): 174 days after its cutoff
- Claude Opus 5.5 (training cutoff June 2026): 113 days after its cutoff
- Gemini 4 Argon (training cutoff March 2026): 204 days after its cutoff
- Grok 4.7 (training cutoff May 2026): 143 days after its cutoff

## Sources

1. [Dario Amodei on X: reply to Nathan Calvin](https://x.com/DarioAmodei/status/2112732230124818891) (x.com, official)
2. [Nathan Calvin on X: 'what is Anthropic?'](https://x.com/_NathanCalvin/status/2112295219765137570) (x.com, discussion)

## Changes

- 2026-10-21 (filed): Created (Techmeme)

## Related

- 2026-10-20: [Anthropic draft S-1: $16.3B H1 revenue, $80.7B paper loss](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-10-20-anthropic-draft-s1-h1-2026-financials/index.md)
- 2026-10-18: [Anthropic commits 5% of its shares to a new Anthropic Public Benefit Fund, about 20% of all shares now pledged to the public good](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-10-18-anthropic-public-benefit-fund-5-percent-shares/index.md)
- 2026-10-16: [Politico: Anthropic quietly pitches lawmakers its own frontier AI safety bill, letting a D.C. judge halt a model only for imminent catastrophic risk](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-10-16-anthropic-draft-frontier-ai-safety-bill/index.md)
- 2026-06-10: [Dario Amodei publishes "Policy on the AI Exponential", calling for binding frontier-AI regulation](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-06-10-dario-amodei-policy-on-the-ai-exponential/index.md)
- People: [Dario Amodei](https://postcutoff.com/person/dario-amodei/)
- Archived: 2 posts, listed in https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-10-21-amodei-race-to-the-top-reply-calvin/index.json