NSA spies are reportedly using Anthropic’s Mythos, despite Pentagon feud
The National Security Agency would use Mythos Preview, Anthropic’s recently announced model that it has not made public. Axios reports. The news comes weeks after the NSA’s parent agency, the Department of Defense, labeled Anthropic a “supply chain risk” after the company refused to grant Pentagon officials unrestricted access to the model’s full capabilities.
Anthropic announced Mythos earlier this month as a frontier model designed for cybersecurity tasks, but claimed the model was too capable of offensive cyber attacks to be released publicly. As a result, the AI company limited access to Mythos to about 40 organizations, some of which it has publicly named only a dozen.
The NSA appears to be among the unnamed recipients and is said to use Mythos primarily to scan environments for exploitable vulnerabilities. The British AI Security Institute has also done so confirmed that it has access to Mythos.
The US military’s increasing use of Anthropic’s tools comes as it simultaneously argues in court that these tools could threaten national security. The dispute within the Pentagon arose when Anthropic refused to make Claude available for mass domestic surveillance and autonomous weapons development.
The NSA’s access to Mythos comes as Anthropic’s relationship with the Trump administration appears to be thawing. Last Friday, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei met with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
The White House reportedly called the meeting productive.
TechCrunch has contacted the NSA for comment. Anthropic declined to comment.
