Anthropic held cyberthreat briefings with agency CIOs last month
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Discussions included how to defend digital assets following the debut of advanced AI models, like Anthropic’s Mythos.
Leading artificial intelligence developer Anthropic hosted briefing sessions for federal agency chief information officers in early May, several sources familiar with the sessions told Nextgov/FCW.
Meetings occurred May 7 and May 8. While briefing topics varied, they focused on defending digital assets from cyber threats powered by advanced AI models including Anthropic’s Mythos Preview, the sources said.
Other branches of government have been informed of Mythos’s capabilities. In mid-May, lawmakers on the House Homeland Security Committee received a briefing with Anthropic executives on Mythos’s ability to detect software vulnerabilities.
The launch of Mythos Preview in early April came alongside Anthropic’s announcement of Project Glasswing, an initiative that granted access to the model in its beta form to multiple participating private sector partners. On Tuesday, Anthropic announced its expansion of Project Glasswing to include roughly 150 new partners following initial feedback from inaugural companies.
New participants in Project Glasswing are from industries that weren’t included in the first cohort, with sectors like power, water, healthcare, communications and hardware now part of Anthropic’s initiative.
Project Glasswing’s debut came just weeks after the Pentagon labeled Anthropic a supply chain risk in response to the company contesting the use of its technology in Pentagon operations with autonomous weaponry and American surveillance. The designation prompted President Donald Trump to order the government to halt all use of Anthropic products. The legality of the supply chain risk designation is being contested in court following Anthropic’s lawsuit against federal agencies and their leadership.
Despite the supply chain risk designation, the federal government is keen to understand Mythos’s threat capabilities. A long-awaited executive order on AI was slated to address how the federal government analyzes AI-driven cyberthreats, including granting intelligence and security agencies access to advanced frontier AI models, but signing of that order was postponed after Trump expressed doubts that it might hinder AI innovation. Trump signed a scaled-down version of that order Tuesday that implemented a lesser degree of federal oversight on such advanced models.