The White House reportedly harbors suspicions that a group with links to China may have gained access to Anthropic’s powerful artificial intelligence systems.
According to a recent report by Semafor, the White House's decision to impose export restrictions on Anthropic’s Mythos AI was partly driven by fears that it had been accessed by a group connected to China. If the Chinese government were to have obtained access to advanced models such as Mythos 5 or Fable 5, it would pose a significant national security risk. Furthermore, such access could potentially allow the government to reverse engineer the model through a technique called distillation, where a "student" AI is trained on a more sophisticated model to replicate its behavior.
The White House has not yet confirmed this report. Separately, a post on X by Trump advisor David Sacks did not mention China, instead focusing on a reported ability for Fable and Mythos to be "jailbroken," a claim Anthropic has denied. Anthropic has not responded to a request for comment, though a spokesperson did tell Semafor that the government did not bring up China during its discussions regarding export controls.
Should Mythos have been accessed by the Chinese government, it would not represent the first security breach involving Anthropic’s most powerful model. The company has previously stated that Mythos is too dangerous and potent for public consumption, yet a Discord group reportedly had access for two weeks before Anthropic discovered the unauthorized entry and subsequently cut off their access.
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