News broke this week that the National Security Agency (NSA) is using Anthropic’s Mythos AI model for offensive cyber operations, likely against China and Iran. It makes a lot of sense, given the reported power of Mythos to find and exploit vulnerabilities. But it’s just the latest sign that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth might be losing his war against Anthropic. Anthropic has installed about half a dozen engineers at NSA, according to the Financial Times, though the newspaper reports it’s unclear if Anthropic staff are actively assisting in operations against adversarial countries. At the very least, they’re customizing the AI models for specific applications, according to the FT. Back in March, the Pentagon labeled Anthropic a supply chain risk because the company refused to modify the guardrails on Claude. The Defense Department wanted to use Claude without any restrictions, but Anthropic wouldn’t budge on two issues: use of its AI for autonomous weapons and mass surveillance of Americans.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei met with Hegseth on Feb. 24, but they couldn’t come to an agreement and the Defense Secretary launched a crusade against the company to put it in its place. Anthropic wouldn’t budge, so President Donald Trump gave his blessing to blacklist the company, setting in motion a process to purge Claude from government systems. But it doesn’t seem like Hegseth’s war, waged in conjunction with Emil Michael, the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, is going so well.
