Anthropic becomes impossible for White House to ignore

Anthropic’s new Mythos model is keeping the company’s foot in the White House’s door despite the Trump administration blacklisting the firm’s products from military and government work earlier this year.

Mythos, Anthropic’s most advanced model to date, has drawn interest from various parts of the federal government, giving the artificial intelligence firm a chance to smooth over its rocky relationship with the Trump administration.

Less than two months ago, President Trump condemned Anthropic as an “out of control radical left” company, prompting uncertainty about the firm’s future in a Republican-led Washington.

But in the two weeks since Anthropic unveiled Mythos, the White House has seemingly softened its tone on the company.

Trump told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Tuesday the AI firm  “tends to be on the left,” but “we get along with them.”

“They’re very smart, and I think they can be of great use. I like smart people, I like high-IQ people and they definitely have high IQs,” he said. “I think we’ll get along with them just fine.”

Days earlier, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei met with administration officials at the White House, including chief of staff Susie Wiles and reportedly Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, to discuss Mythos and other cybersecurity concerns.

The White House had some “very good talks” with the company, Trump said, adding the firm is “shaping up.”

The comments, combined with Anthropic’s recent meetings with the White House and other federal agencies, signal a potential reconciliation with the company even as it fights the government in court.

Anthropic sued the federal government in two courts last month over the Pentagon’s decision to label the company a “supply chain risk” after negotiations over safety guardrails fell apart. The designation, typically reserved for companies of foreign adversaries, prohibits the use of Anthropic’s products by the Department of Defense.

The AI firm is also challenging Trump’s social media directive addressed to civilian agencies to stop using Anthropic’s products. A California judge granted a preliminary injunction to temporarily halt the designation and directive, while a Washington, D.C., court of appeals panel rejected Anthropic’s request for an emergency stay.

As both sides prepare to square off in court, Anthropic released Mythos, an AI model that can spot decades-old security vulnerabilities in major web browsers and software. The model can help companies or organizations more easily find and repair these gaps, but it could also present new risks when in the hands of bad actors looking to exploit vulnerabilities. The company released it to a limited group of technology and cybersecurity companies and Wall Street banks.

Speculation quickly swirled over whether Mythos would be accessible to the government, given the company’s ongoing feud with the administration.

“It really does feel like this is the government cutting off its nose to spite its face,” Jessica Tillipman, the associate dean for government procurement law studies at the George Washington University Law School, told The Hill.

Despite the ban, the White House was quick to engage with the company again following the release of Mythos.

Bessent and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell met with Wall Street executives on the issue earlier this month. Bessent also joined Vice President Vance for a call with Amodei and other AI leaders to discuss cybersecurity associated with AI models, CNBC reported.

And now, federal agencies are requesting access to Mythos for their own defensive work. An Anthropic official told The Hill the company has briefed teams at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

Further, Axios reported this week the National Security Agency — housed under the Pentagon — is using Mythos despite the ban, while the Treasury Department requested access , per Bloomberg.

Trump on Tuesday went as far to say a deal to use Anthropic in the Defense Department is “possible.”

The administration’s tone is decidedly dialed back from just a few weeks ago, when various voices in Trump’s orbit were focused on Anthropic’s political leanings and seemed less interested in engaging with the company.

Dean Ball, a co-author of Trump’s White House AI Action Plan who supported Anthropic in its clash with the Pentagon, suggested the release of Mythos underscores the Trump administration’s mistaken approach to the company.

“I think the gods are trying to tell us something about the correct way that we are dealing with the government, if they’re trying to tell the government something about how to deal and not deal with this technology and with this industry,” said Ball, who left the White House last summer.

“You can’t say that it looked particularly wise,” he added.

Even if the White House does not agree ideologically with the company, technology experts say  Anthropic’s capabilities might force the Trump administration to work with it. Anthropic is one of only a handful of companies producing the country’s most advanced models.

“The government is on some level losing some of its leverage because there are only a handful of frontier models that they can tap into. It’s a highly concentrated market,” Tillipman said, adding, “It’s clear to me that they [the government] were grasping for whatever to try to use as leverage, because Anthropic wouldn’t budge and they wound up backing themselves into this legal position.”

Matt Mittelsteadt, a senior frontier security researcher at the Institute for AI Policy and Strategy, added it would be in the government’s best interest to have multiple model vendors to boost cybersecurity.

“If you don’t have optionality, if you put your eggs all in one basket, then you are going to find yourself limited,” Mittelsteadt told The Hill on Tuesday. “Diversity is almost certainly going to be key here.”

“Things like vulnerability discovery, even if we have two models that are roughly both very good at this, because they are designed differently, because their cognition … is different, it is very likely they’re going to be surfacing slightly different things,” he said.

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