White House AI Czar Sacks Pushes Back on Anthropic's Call to Restrict Open-Source AI

White House AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks has criticized Anthropic's push to impose restrictions on open-source AI models. Sacks argued that labeling these models as 'Chinese' is misleading, since open-source AI is inherently global and legally modifiable by anyone. He warned that such restrictions would damage the American open-source ecosystem rather than protect it. Sacks also distinguished distillation — a standard industry practice — from the theft of proprietary model weights, pushing back on Anthropic's framing. Broader industry voices have echoed his stance, urging policymakers to embrace open-source AI as a driver of innovation.