Anthropic Warns on ‘Authoritarian AI’—Then Courts Abu Dhabi

Anthropic authoritarian – Anthropic has framed its push for AI leadership as a defense of democracies against “authoritarian governments” like China. But a slice of the company is tied to Abu Dhabi’s ruling establishment, including investments routed through MGX—raising questions about

Anthropic’s public fight with the Pentagon has helped burnish its image as a company that treats AI ethics like a mission. not a marketing slogan. Yet a policy paper published in May—warning that the world could tip into “authoritarian AI”—leans on arguments that don’t fully match where some of Anthropic’s capital is coming from.

In that May policy paper. Anthropic said “it’s essential that the US and its allies stay ahead of authoritarian governments like the Chinese Communist Party. ” warning that otherwise the future could fall into tech-powered tyranny. Anthropic and other leading AI companies, it argued, can act as a bulwark of democratic values, protecting societies from repression.

The document did not foreground a detail seldom highlighted in public debate: a portion of Anthropic is owned by the Emirati dictatorship of Abu Dhabi.

The May paper maps a threat narrative that centers on China—arguing that democracies must lead in AI development and deployment. or an era of “authoritarian AI” will begin. It also describes how the CCP is using AI to censor speech. repress dissidents. hack governments and corporations. strengthen the People’s Liberation Army. and “enforce draconian policies on ethnic minorities” through biometric collection and facial recognition.

But Anthropic’s own framing travels on the assumption that American dominance is. by itself. a global safety measure—even as the technologies it warns against are already being used by the United States for intelligence. military operations. and ethnic minority repression. The article’s authors point to residents of Tehran—who. they say. might question Anthropic’s argument—citing Anthropic’s role in being “helped bomb” since the start of the joint U.S.–Israeli war against Iran.

Anthropic also insists its concern is not limited to China. In a 2024 blog post. CEO Dario Amodei wrote: “AI-powered authoritarianism seems too terrible to contemplate. so democracies need to be able to set the terms by which powerful AI is brought into the world. both to avoid being overpowered by authoritarians and to prevent human rights abuses within authoritarian countries.” In the May paper. Anthropic similarly cast the challenge as broader than a U.S.-China race. describing a struggle between democracy and “authoritarian governments” broadly construed.

The trouble for the credibility of that line comes into sharper focus in the Middle East. where Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth apparatus has invested in Anthropic twice this year. In February. Anthropic said it raised $30 billion in capital from a group of investors that included MGX. an AI-focused investment vehicle of a Emirati government capital controlled by Abu Dhabi’s royal family. A more recent round announced on May 28—valued at $65 billion and bringing Anthropic’s valuation to $965 billion—also included MGX.

Like China, the United Arab Emirates outlaws wide swaths of democratic life. Political parties. a free press. freedoms to associate and assemble. open elections. due process. and free speech are described as nonexistent in the reporting. Political dissidents. it adds. face torture. and any speech—online or offline—that causes “damage to national unity” can lead to life imprisonment or the death penalty.

The U.S. government customer for Anthropic—its main governmental customer—is, the reporting notes, largely unconcerned with those realities. The State Department’s 2024 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices assessed the UAE faces “credible reports of: disappearances; arbitrary arrest or detention; transnational repression against individuals in another country; serious restrictions on freedom of expression and media freedom. including censorship; and prohibiting independent trade unions or significant or systematic restrictions on workers’ freedom of association.” Freedom House. described as a State Department-backed think tank. gives the UAE a score of 18 out of 100 on its “Global Freedom” index.

Anthropic declined to comment, and MGX did not respond to a request for comment.

Matthew Tokson. a law professor at the University of Utah who focuses on the security implications of artificial intelligence. said the framing doesn’t hold. “Like China, the UAE is at the forefront of AI-based authoritarian surveillance,” Tokson said. He added that while he generally agrees with calls to restrict processor exports to China and other measures to bolster American AI firms. he does not buy the nationalist rhetoric as patriotism. In his view, it’s better understood as part of an anti-regulatory agenda.

Tokson’s point was blunt: the more a company persuades the public that its business agenda is really about national security. the more likely Washington is to take a light touch. He went further. saying Anthropic’s position is undercut by the company’s ownership ties: “The fact that Anthropic is partly owned by the government of Abu Dhabi. which is similar to China in its extensive use of AI surveillance to support an authoritarian government. suggests that its anti-authoritarian arguments are more based on a cynical policy position than a sincere passion for democracy or antipathy toward authoritarian governments.”.

The reporting also ties MGX to Abu Dhabi’s national security and intelligence ecosystem through its chair. Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan. Through his roles—including serving as national security and intelligence chief. and holding business portfolios that include chairmanship of the AI firm G42. which is described as a founding partner in MGX—Tahnoun has been linked. the article says. to efforts to surveil and hack the phones of Emirati dissidents and human rights advocates.

A 2020 investigation by Bill Marczak. a senior researcher at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab. is cited as placing “Spy Sheikh” Tahnoun at the center of myriad hacking. espionage. and surveillance operations. A 2025 Wired profile is also cited. describing him as Abu Dhabi’s “spymaster sheikh” and noting G42’s “special areas of strength in state-sponsored hacking and surveillance tech.”.

The article points to a 2019 New York Times report about a covert Emirati government surveillance campaign using an instant messaging app called ToTok. It adds that Marczak tied the app to Tahnoun and to G42 in his 2020 analysis. The Wired profile described Tahnoun’s ambitions to “dominate AI. ” and it includes a detail that “an engineer who worked at G42 at the time told me that all of the [ToTok] voice. video. and text chats were analyzed by AI for what the government considered suspicious activity.”.

G42 declined to comment, and neither it nor MGX responded to interview requests for Tahnoun.

There is also reason, the reporting says, to believe G42 and MGX have already deployed Anthropic’s large language models. A review of DNS data—internet records mapping website names to numerical addresses—found both G42 and MGX configured their servers to allow personnel to access Anthropic tools like Claude. Anthropic’s flagship large language model.

Internally, the piece says, Amodei has acknowledged the tension more directly. In a 2025 memo on Gulf State venture capital obtained by Wired. he wrote: “Unfortunately. I think ‘No bad person should ever benefit from our success’ is a pretty difficult principle to run a business on.” He also wrote that such investment would boost “dictators” and conceded it would give an authoritarian government “some soft power” to wield against the company. Even so. he dismissed hypocrisy concerns as a “Comms Headache. ” driven by “very stupid” commentators “having a poor understanding of substantive issues.”.

Then, the memo reportedly turned practical. Amodei wrote: “We gain a very large benefit from having access to this capital.”

Anthropic’s public warning is about the threat of AI strengthening authoritarianism abroad. The reported investments and internal admissions instead land closer to home—where Abu Dhabi’s capital can help power Anthropic’s growth while the company insists the fight is still. fundamentally. about preventing a slide into “authoritarian AI.”.

Anthropic Abu Dhabi MGX Dario Amodei AI surveillance authoritarian AI Emirati investments Claude G42 Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan UAE human rights