Administration officials confronted the leader of Anthropic over the continued availability of the Fable model during a meeting on the day export controls were enacted. Sean Cairncross and Scott Bessent pressured CEO Dario Amodei to stop the model's deployment, which Amodei declined, leading Bessent to label the choice "a bad decision" in a report by Politico.

The clash followed an 85 day dispute between the company and the White House that altered federal AI policy. Amodei argued that stopping the rollout of Fable would set a precedent that models with high capability cannot be deployed commercially. During the same encounter, Amodei offered to explain jailbreaks to Bessent to put risks in perspective, but the official rejected the offer.