September 13, 2026 - Amodei: Let AI Safety Catch Up

I interviewed Richard Clarke on CNN on Saturday, one day after the nation marked 25 years since September 11, amid a torrent of news about artificial intelligence.

Clarke has worn many hats. He spent ten years in the White House under three presidents and was the nation's first cyber czar. But on September 11, 2001, he was the White House counterterrorism chief, the man who ran the crisis response from the Situation Room that morning, and who had spent the preceding months warning the new administration about al-Qaeda. That is what gave weight to what he said to the families of the victims. On March 24, 2004, testifying before the 9/11 Commission on live television, he said: "Your government failed you. Those entrusted with protecting you failed you. And I failed you."

He was talking about warnings that were heard but not heeded. So I asked whether he saw parallels to this moment with AI.

"Enormous parallels," he said. "In both cases we had experts in the field giving clear warnings of an impending disaster, warnings based on empirical evidence, and they were ignored."

The warnings this week came from inside the labs. One Anthropic researcher resigned, writing that the people building AI "earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade." A colleague who stayed publicly agreed. Clarke called that hyperbolic, but said there is "probably a 100% chance" of major disasters short of it if nothing is done soon. "We have regulations for guardrails on highways," he told me, "but we don't have regulations for guardrails on AI."

Hours after we spoke, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called on his own industry to slow down, warning that within six to 12 months AI could direct a swarm of agents to take over the entire internet.

On Saturday I asked my audience whether AI could wipe out humanity. Roughly 75 percent of more than 45,000 respondents said yes. The public, it seems, is already listening. Twenty-five years ago, Clarke told the country what it looks like when a nation hears the alarm and rolls over. He's ringing it again.

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Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is urging the AI industry to slow development, warning that rapidly advancing systems could soon become difficult to control, while calling for stronger safety measures, independent oversight and international cooperation before AI capabilities outpace existing safeguards.

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