Dario Amodei says the machines are about to eat the internet, and the men who should stop them just happen to be his old housemate, his sister’s movement, and the same donor class that already owns a piece of Anthropic. That is not oversight. That is a family reunion with badges.
In his essay “We Must Pace the Frontier”, the Anthropic CEO warned that a swarm of AI agents could take over the web in six to twelve months and do “hundreds of billions of dollars in damage.”
His first fix is not a statute. It is a nonprofit. Leading labs, he says, should give “embedded third-party evaluators” from Model Evaluation and Threat Research, or METR, “employee-like access” to desks, badges, laptops, and the lab floor. Anthropic will do it first. Sam Altman said OpenAI will do the same.
The New York Post spent Tuesday mapping the clubhouse. METR spun out of the Alignment Research Center, an Effective Altruism incubator run by Paul Christiano. Christiano roomed with Amodei, worked with him at OpenAI, and later sat as one of the first five trustees of Anthropic’s Long-Term Benefit Trust.
Ajeya Cotra, on METR’s technical staff, is married to Christiano and has organized in the EA world for years. METR’s founder and CEO, Beth Barnes, was hired by Christiano and came up through EA in college. Chief scientist Hjalmar Wijk and staffers Megan Kinniment and Pip Arnott came out of the same Oxford research cluster that has fed the movement for a decade.
Independent, they call it.
The Money Still Knows the Address
METR says it takes no money from AI companies or their employees, and that staff must disclose equity in the labs they inspect. Fine. Follow the checks anyway.
Jaan Tallinn, Skype cofounder and Anthropic investor, has earmarked up to $752,000 for METR through his Survival and Flourishing Fund. Dustin Moskovitz, Facebook cofounder, Democratic megadonor, Anthropic investor, and EA kingpin, steered $1.515 million through Coefficient Giving, the rebranded Open Philanthropy, into ARC in 2022 while METR was still living under that roof as ARC Evals. METR later said that gift was firewalled from its own operations. In August the group announced $71 million in new outside funding over six months.
Fox News reported that Coefficient is on track to commit more than $1 billion to AI-related grantmaking in 2026 after $168 million in 2024 and $351 million in 2025. That is not a hobby. That is a governing class buying the referee.
Sam Bankman-Fried, the EA poster boy who now sits in federal prison, was one of Anthropic’s biggest early investors. Amodei has pledged to give away 80 percent of his wealth. His sister Daniela married Holden Karnofsky, founder of two major EA nonprofits. The movement talks like a monastery and spends like a political action committee.
Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.
Matthew 7 does not need a footnote. A watchdog funded by the same men who own the kennel is not a prophet. He is a brand.
Washington Is Not Buying the Halo
A source familiar with White House thinking told the Post that “METR is essentially Anthropic in another form.” That tracks a year of friction. Officials have already treated Amodei as a doomer who wants Washington to freeze the field his own company leads.
Perry Metzger, chairman of the Alliance for the Future, did not dress it up.
Saying you want to be audited by the “independent” people at METR is a complete joke. It’s people who are funded by your buddies. It’s completely ridiculous. If you went out tomorrow and you’re a big bank and you had your audits done by an organization consisting entirely of your own former employees, which was funded by the same investors that are investing in you, do you know what the feds would do with you? It would be positively medieval.
Former White House AI czar David Sacks was sharper still. Go ahead and slow down your own labs, he said. You are the frontier. Stop pretending you need an antitrust waiver to form a cartel. Stop pretending METR is independent when it is intertwined with Anthropic’s investors and staff. Stop pretending the motive is pure altruism when a catastrophic cyberattack would bury you in product-liability claims.
FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson rang the same bell at Georgetown. Everyone, he said, should be “deeply suspicious” when companies arrive in Washington asking for a stack of new rules and an exemption from the antitrust laws at the same time. Alarm bells. All of them.
A METR spokesman answered that no small group should run AI, that the point is to drag lab secrets into public view, and that funders do not pick the projects. That is the right press statement. It does not unmake the org chart. Christiano built the incubator. His wife works at the spinoff. The CEO he hired runs it. Anthropic’s investors paid the rent. Then Amodei named that shop as the world’s embedded conscience and asked rivals to copy him.
Real danger in these systems is not a punchline. Recursive self-improvement, rogue agents, and a botnet that owns the pipes are not science fiction anymore. The fraud is the costume. Effective Altruism already sold the country a story about maximizing good while Bankman-Fried maximized other people’s deposits.
Now the same moral vocabulary wants badges inside the two labs that already dominate frontier intelligence, plus a legal hall pass so those labs can set the speed limit for everyone else, including shops that are not even on the track.
If Anthropic’s unreleased models are as frightening as Amodei claims, he can throttle his own training run tomorrow. He does not need a family foundation, an Oxford cluster, and a Democratic megadonor’s grant machine to bless the pause. He needs the rest of the country to confuse that blessing with law. That is the part to refuse.
Starting the Day With a Scripture-Inspired Roast Helps Center Your Thoughts on Eternal Truths Amid Temporal Pressures
The world can seem chaotic, especially right after we wake up. Many believers start their mornings reaching for something familiar — a hot cup of coffee — yet end up settling for mediocre brews that do little more than deliver a caffeine jolt. The daily grind of life, with its endless distractions, news cycles, and responsibilities, can leave even the most faithful feeling spiritually parched alongside their physical fatigue. What if your morning ritual could do more than wake you up? What if it could ground you in truth, nourish your body with exceptional quality, and quietly advance a kingdom purpose at the same time?
That’s the promise — and the reality — behind Promised Grounds Coffee. This Christian-founded company doesn’t just roast beans; it approaches every step as an act of worship and discipleship. By selecting only the top 10% of specialty-grade beans, ethically sourced from dedicated farmers in Central and South America, and small-batch roasting them with reverence in Austin, Texas, Promised Grounds delivers what many describe as the best coffee available — never burnt, never bland, but rich with origin stories and layered flavors that honor God’s creation.
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The challenge for today’s Christians runs deeper than finding a decent cup. In an age of convenience-driven consumerism, it’s easy to support companies that dilute values or remain silent on matters of faith. Many believers want their everyday choices — from what they drink to how they spend — to reflect discipleship rather than just convenience. Promised Grounds solves this by weaving Christian excellence into the entire process: beans nurtured with prayerful stewardship by farming families, roasted as an offering rather than a commodity, and packaged with Bible verses to encourage a mindset of gratitude and purpose from the first sip. Reviewers consistently praise the smooth, rich profiles — whether enjoyed black in a drip maker, iced on a warm day, or shared in fellowship — noting how the quality stands toe-to-toe with premium secular brands while delivering something far more meaningful.
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