The Trump administration’s top AI security official, Chris Fall, has resigned after just three months on the job. After the U.S. Commerce Department imposed export restrictions on Anthropic in June, Fall was actively involved in negotiations with its top management to restore access to advanced Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models.
The Trump administration’s top AI security official, Chris Fall, has resigned after just three months on the job. After the U.S. Commerce Department imposed export restrictions on Anthropic in June, Fall was actively involved in negotiations with its top management to restore access to advanced Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models.
Fall was appointed director of the Center for Artificial Intelligence Standards and Innovation (CAISI) just three months ago, after the previous incumbent, Collin Burns, left less than a week later. Burns was effectively “pushed out” of the position in April due to his previous work at Anthropic and the conflict between the Trump administration and the company.
The reasons for Fall's resignation are not yet known.
Before Burns and Fall, the agency was led by venture capitalist David Sachs, who at the time served as the White House “czar for AI and cryptocurrency.” Sachs resigned in March.
CAISI, which operates under the National Institute of Standards and Technology, is the main organization for developing technical standards, testing methods for artificial intelligence models, and assessing cybersecurity risks. However, it is this agency that has been left out of the recent high-profile scandal related to the risks of AI models.
The incident occurred in June when the U.S. Department of Commerce implemented a little-known export control directive that effectively forced Anthropic to recall its Mythos and Fable models . The ban was lifted at the end of the month when Commerce Secretary Howard Latnick said he was satisfied with Anthropic's security plans.
Fall's resignation comes as the White House and lawmakers across the country struggle to find ways to regulate the new technology.
"Following Chris' departure, NIST Director Dr. Arvind Raman will continue to oversee CAISI and serve as interim director of CAISI," the spokesperson said.
Fall’s resignation also follows a wave of concerns this weekend about a new version of the open-source Kimi model from the Chinese AI lab Moonshot , which has shown performance on par with the leading-edge flagship models. The administration has been considering measures to somehow ban the Chinese open-source models. This immediately sparked controversy and outrage this weekend — particularly from Sachs, who argued that regulation should not become a protectionist tool for American labs with closed AI models.
