It seems the US government isn’t entirely opposed to using technology from Anthropic, a company it labeled “a supply chain threat” earlier this year. According to a new report, the NSA is using the AI company’s Mythos model “for offensive cyber operations.”
The Financial Times they mention that Anthropic has placed six engineers within the NSA as temporary staff. Their work is said to include guiding the service's use of Claude Mythos and adapting the model for specific applications.
It is not known whether Anthropic employees are helping with live hacking operations or whether Mythos is being used in active campaigns. But a person familiar with the matter told the FT that the model is useful for penetrating the networks of countries such as China and Iran. The logic is that US adversaries are likely to use their own cyber-focused AI systems, making an early advantage important.
The publication highlights the NSA’s remit, which includes collecting signals intelligence through wiretaps, undersea cables, corporate partnerships and other illegal methods, as well as offensive cyberattacks against foreign adversaries. The agency declined to confirm or deny the publication, and Anthropic did not comment.
In February, the Pentagon threatened to shut down Anthropic if it did not lift restrictions on Claude's use for mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. The dispute reportedly began while Anthropic and the Department of Defense were negotiating a $200 million contract, before the government demanded broader access to Claude for “any lawful use.”
Anthropic refused, and the government labeled it a supply chain risk, putting it in the same broad category as companies like Huawei and ZTE. The company later said it would sue, arguing that the designation was legally unfounded.
A federal judge in California temporarily blocked the “supply chain risk” designation in March, but a Washington appeals court allowed the Pentagon’s blacklist to remain in place in April. By May, the Pentagon had signed major AI deals with OpenAI, Google, Microsoft and Nvidia, while also excluding Anthropic.
The NSA is part of the Department of Defense, the same department that has argued in court that Anthropic's technology poses a national security risk. However, reports suggest that the NSA is already using Mythos despite the blacklist, suggesting that parts of the Department of Defense may find the model too useful to ignore.
Anthropic has pitched Mythos as a defensive cybersecurity tool. The company launched Project Glasswing in April with partners including AWS, Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, and CrowdStrike, saying Mythos had identified thousands of zero-day vulnerabilities.
This week, Anthropic said its partners had found more than 10.000 high or critical severity flaws and that 150 more organizations in more than 15 countries now have access to Mythos.
Although the press releases will range from very select to rare, I said I'd pass...because sometimes the editors hide.
