TL;DR
Anthropic named Tino Cuellar its first chief global affairs officer to manage government ties amid Pentagon blacklist and export fights
Anthropic named Tino Cuellar its first chief global affairs officer to manage government ties amid Pentagon blacklist and export fights
Anthropic has named Mariano-Florentino Cuellar its first chief global affairs officer, hiring a veteran policy hand at a moment when the AI company’s relationship with the US government remains deeply strained. Cuellar will report to Anthropic president Daniela Amodei and work from the company’s San Francisco headquarters, a spokesperson told Reuters.
His job will include managing relationships with the US government and the growing number of countries where Anthropic is expanding. Cuellar, who goes by Tino, is a former California Supreme Court justice and most recently served as president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a role he held until July.
He also served as a special assistant in Barack Obama’s White House, where he worked on regulatory policy and public safety. At Carnegie, he co-chaired a bipartisan task force on nuclear proliferation and US national security, a domain some AI leaders have cited as a model for governing the technology’s risks.
A 2025 study co-led by Cuellar helped inform the passage of California’s SB 53, the first US law focused specifically on AI safety. Anthropic endorsed the bill, which protects AI whistleblowers, requires high-revenue developers to report on safety standards and incidents, and carries a maximum fine of one million dollars per violation.
Cuellar has been on Anthropic’s Long-Term Benefit Trust since January, the independent body that exists to hold the company to its public benefit mission. He is stepping down from that role to take the job, and the trust is looking for a replacement to what was a four-member group.
The hire comes after a turbulent year for Anthropic’s government relations. The Pentagon designated the company a supply-chain risk in March after Anthropic refused to let its Claude models be used for autonomous weapons or mass surveillance of Americans. Anthropic sued the government over the blacklisting, and the case is still in court.
More recently, the Trump administration imposed export controls on Anthropic’s most advanced AI models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, over national security concerns. The ban was lifted after roughly three weeks once Anthropic agreed to a set of security commitments, but the episode underscored how fraught the company’s position in Washington has become.
Oren Cass, founder of the conservative think tank American Compass and a friend of Cuellar, told Reuters that the new hire would be “open-minded” to the Trump administration’s positions and eager to find the root of any disagreement. Cuellar himself said in a statement that policymakers had reached an “inflection point” on AI governance, adding that the choices made now would determine whether humanity harnesses extraordinary possibilities or faces enormous risk.
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