Amodei says open weights are dangerous — but denies he wants a ban

anthropic ceo dario amodei detailed his 'nightmare scenarios' where china uses superior ai for military dominance or bad actors use open weights to engineer biological weapons, arguing the defense-offense balance heavily favors attackers in biology. he recommended specific policy measures including stricter us chip export controls to china and mandates for safety testing on all powerful models, while noting that low-capability open models remain a public good. this stance intensifies the conflict between open-source advocates and closed-model labs, coinciding with reports that openai is privately lobbying against open weights despite recently signing a letter supporting them.