Expert takes Aug 15, 2026

Today

A Washington norm that existed only as custom has been named in public — and the person it was named after confirms it is real.

Dean Ball writes on AI policy and is a former staffer at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. On August 14 he responded to the name another former administration official, Jon Schweppe, had given the rule — "the Dean Ball rule" — and confirmed that it holds: inside Washington, loyalty is expected of former government officials over honesty once they enter public life; in his words, "the silent rule, as Jon accurately describes, is that when push comes to shove, loyalty to the administration you served in should win out over analytic honesty" (Ball's long post). He also volunteers that when he spoke out against the War Department's moves against Anthropic, "I knew exactly what I was doing … and I knew what the consequences were likely to be."