Anthropic CEO Meets White House on Mythos Access

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei met White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in the West Wing on Friday to discuss civilian agency access to Mythos, Anthropic’s cybersecurity AI. The White House described the talks as “productive and constructive.”

The meeting focused on how federal departments could use Mythos to find and fix software vulnerabilities. Anthropic remains barred from Department of Defense contracts while litigation over the administration’s earlier supply-chain designation continues.

Mythos was developed as part of Project Glasswing and was not designed solely for security work. Anthropic reported that improvements in the model’s reasoning and code generation gave it the ability to autonomously identify and exploit software flaws. In internal testing, Anthropic reported Mythos found thousands of previously unknown, high-severity vulnerabilities across major operating systems and web browsers, including a 27-year-old OpenBSD bug and a 16-year-old FFmpeg flaw that had passed automated tests millions of times.

Anthropic limited access to Mythos through Project Glasswing to a coalition including Amazon Web Services, Apple, Cisco, Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, CrowdStrike and JPMorgan Chase, with up to $100 million in use credits. The company presented the tool as a way to find vulnerabilities before malicious actors.

Several federal agencies have begun testing Mythos, including intelligence components and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Treasury officials have indicated interest in gaining authorized access. National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross is expected to lead an interagency team to identify security gaps in critical infrastructure and assess risks from AI-enabled exploits.

The White House initially designated Anthropic a supply-chain risk and the administration announced it would not do business with the company. A federal judge in San Francisco later issued an injunction blocking enforcement of that directive for non-military agencies while litigation proceeds. An appeals court denied Anthropic’s request for a temporary stay. As a result, Anthropic remains barred from Department of Defense contracts but can continue work with other federal agencies under current court rulings.

Officials inside the administration are treating the Pentagon dispute separately from civilian agency access. A White House adviser described the situation as chaotic and added the meeting was elevated to Wiles to hear Amodei, check claims and plan a way forward. An administration official summarized the split: “There’s progress with the White House. There’s no progress with [the Department of] War.”

A source close to the negotiations warned: “It would be grossly irresponsible for the US government to deprive itself of the technological leaps that the new model presents. It would be a gift to China.”

Anthropic hired Ballard Partners, where Wiles once worked, to lobby on procurement issues with the Defense Department. The Office of Management and Budget is preparing guidance to allow agencies to assess defenses using Mythos, according to officials involved in the discussions.

Next steps include technical and governance details for civilian agencies to use Mythos while litigation over Department of Defense contracts continues. For now, the White House has opened a path for agencies responsible for the electric grid, the financial system and other critical sectors to evaluate the tool.