Dario Amodei essay urges coordinated AI slowdown to pace the frontier

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published a roughly 3,800-word essay, We Must Pace the Frontier, arguing that the industry should deliberately slow capability improvements so safety work can keep up. It proposes three steps: Anthropic unilaterally giving third-party evaluators permanent embedded access; a critical mass of US labs adopting shared standards, enabled by legislation or a narrow antitrust waiver; and escalating international coordination, from a bioweapons ban to a full pause, which Amodei treats as least plausible. According to Moonshots hosts, Sam Altman, Demis Hassabis and Elon Musk endorsed it quickly, while President Trump called it a hoax and China called it a Cold War trick. Alex Wissner-Gross said he coined the term safety cartel and that the White House and the Speaker rejected any cartel or liability waiver; no document was cited for those positions. A later Moonshots episode reported, and played a clip of, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent telling the House Financial Services Committee that labs should not get a blank check on liability, because being held responsible is the best safety guard, and urging Congress not to consider a waiver. Peter Diamandis framed this as the Treasury half rejecting a deal of pacing in exchange for antitrust and liability cover. Dave Blundin objected that the labs never asked for liability relief, only for an antitrust waiver so they could meet to discuss slowing down; the essay itself, as described in the research, raises antitrust waivers and government mediation but not a liability waiver. Views on the panel differ: Wissner-Gross praised Bessent for resisting what he calls a manufactured moral panic or pacing provocation and said labs seeking liability relief want the profits of a private industry without its liabilities; Vlad Tenev said the right liability regime depends on the potential blast radius of harm; Peter said labs must stay responsible for their agents. Earlier readings also differ on whether the essay is sincere safety policy, a clumsy bid for a cartel, or regulatory capture. These remain interpretations.