Axios reports that the National Security Agency is said to be using Anthropic’s recently announced Mythos Preview, a model that has not been released to the public. The news comes weeks after the NSA’s parent agency, the Department of Defense, labeled Anthropic a “supply chain risk” after the company denied Pentagon officials unrestricted access to the model’s full functionality.
Anthropic announced Mythos earlier this month as a frontier model designed for cybersecurity tasks, but claimed the model was too capable of offensive cyberattacks to be released publicly. As a result, the AI company limited access to Mythos to about 40 organizations, only 12 of which were publicly named.
The NSA also appears to be among the private recipients and is said to be using Mythos primarily to scan the environment for exploitable vulnerabilities. The UK’s Institute for AI Security has also confirmed that it has access to Mythos.
The U.S. military’s expanded use of Anthropic’s tools comes at the same time as it argues in court that the tools could threaten national security. The Pentagon’s dispute began with Anthropic’s refusal to allow Claude to be used for domestic mass surveillance or the development of autonomous weapons.
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 reached out to the NSA for comment. Antropic declined to comment.
