Washington stopped reading press releases. The public affairs function — connecting companies with policymakers, regulators, and the political process — is operating in conditions that have shifted meaningfully since 2023. The bipartisan reset, the new playbook, and the firms adjusting.
Deep profiles of Lanes 3, 4, 5, and 6 of the AI Communications 100: the policy architects, the journalists writing the training data, the researchers providing the skeptical counterpoint, and the editorial infrastructure operators.
Following the Hermes/OpenClaw incident, Anthropic issued a public statement acknowledging a bug in third-party harness detection and initiating a refund program. However, this statement left many substantive questions unanswered regarding the underlying mechanisms, scope, and future policies. This article dissects what Anthropic communicated, what was omitted, and the significant issues that remain unresolved.
November 2025 didn't standardize state hemp law — it accelerated the divergence. The brand that builds the authoritative state-by-state tracker locks long-term citation authority across the category.