Today · posts, October 19

Wiener, Carson pan Anthropic draft; only critics describe it

SB 53 author Scott Wiener and Public First head Brad Carson publicly criticize Anthropic's leaked federal AI safety draft for having too few guardrails

Concept illustration: a large sign on a building facade with rows of dark windows above and below it is split into two side-by-side cutaway rooms; the left room has a blank plate and then a dark band lettered MINIMUM above it, the right room has a plate lettered ANTHROPIC beside a black angular mark and then a dark band lettered DRAFT, and a black band lettered PUBLIC FIRST runs beneath both rooms. In the left room a figure wearing a lanyard badge leans over a long table, typing on a laptop whose screen shows a speech bubble, next to an orange-red door standing open onto a bright white doorway; in the right room a figure in the same dark top, lanyard badge and wide trousers stands facing a closed orange-red door with a pale pink circle behind their head, and a laptop showing a speech bubble sits on a long table to the right.

Why it matters: Reporter Shakeel Hashim says Public First is funded by Anthropic and Dario Amodei. Its head, Brad Carson, now opposes the draft, so the opposition is not limited to Anthropic's rivals. We make no new call today.

Public First head Brad Carson says Anthropic's leaked draft falls short of the minimum for federal guardrails (Brad Carson, 2026-10-19), and reporter Shakeel Hashim says Public First is funded by Anthropic and Dario Amodei (Shakeel Hashim, 2026-10-19). SB 53 author Scott Wiener says the draft falls far short of protecting public safety (Scott Wiener, 2026-10-19); Hashim notes Wiener's ties to Anthropic-linked political spending (Shakeel Hashim, 2026-10-19).

Not proven yet: every reading of the clauses comes from critics; the full draft hasn't been reviewed How we checked →

Judgment update: No new call from SecondSource today. The next thing to watch is whether the rewrite Cimino mentioned adds government testing powers and puts a time limit on the clause overriding state law.

Source and checks

This item ran in the brief of Oct 20, 2026, alongside 11 other items. How we checked it, the quote checks and what was still missing that day are on that issue's How we checked page.

Cite this item

SecondSource (2026). "Wiener, Carson pan Anthropic draft; only critics describe it." https://secondsource.io/en/news/2026-10-20-2/. Accessed access date.