OpenAI and Anthropic hire former Trump officials to build Washington influence

OpenAI and Anthropic have brought in a series of former Trump administration officials for senior roles, as frontier artificial intelligence laboratories race to secure political footing and national security trust in Washington.

Anthropic has added at least two former Trump aides to its ranks this year, appointing former deputy White House chief of staff Chris Liddell to its board of directors in February, and former Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) advisor Sihao Huang as head of frontier compute strategy in September. OpenAI has recruited at least three former administration officials, including Thomas Lind, who led AI policy at the Office of the National Cyber Director, and Dean Ball, a former OSTP senior policy advisor who helped draft the White House's flagship AI policy framework.

Why AI labs are hiring in Washington

The push for government expertise arrives as major AI developers brace for heavier federal oversight, export controls, and national security scrutiny. While Donald Trump has previously characterised AI safety concerns as a hoax and promoted self-regulation, his administration retains broad authority over federal procurement, infrastructure approvals, and supply-chain risk classifications.

Relationships between Washington and top AI developers have seen sharp friction. Anthropic faced an extended dispute with defence officials earlier this year, culminating in a US appeals court upholding a Pentagon designation of the firm as a supply chain risk in September. Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei has since taken steps to mend relations with the White House, attending a lunch with Trump alongside other tech executives and dining with the president in September.

Michelle Nie Duncan, a visiting fellow at the Center for a New American Security, noted that frontier companies recognise the levers the administration holds over their operations. She said the companies learned from Anthropic's experience that maintaining strong ties with the White House is vital, particularly as the labs prepare for eventual initial public offerings.

Strategic roles and national security

The new recruits are being deployed directly into policy, hardware, and strategic planning roles. At Anthropic, Huang is managing compute expansion and infrastructure planning following a $45 billion cloud agreement struck with neocloud provider Nscale in August.

At OpenAI, Lind is handling cyber and strategic risk within the national security policy team led by Sasha Baker, a former Biden administration defence official. Ball joined OpenAI in July as head of strategic futures to test assumptions on frontier safety and economic policy, according to OpenAI chief strategy officer Jason Kwon. OpenAI also hired Peter Bowman-Davis, the former Chief AI officer at the Department of Health and Human Services, to work on hardware engineering and model training.

Both OpenAI and Anthropic are continuing to advertise for further political engagement positions as Washington makes frontier AI a central focus of national defence strategy.