The White House is said to have restricted Anthropic's Mythos AI model over fears that a China-linked group may have accessed it, citing potential national security risk.

What happened

According to Semafor, the White House's decision to impose export restrictions on Anthropic's Mythos was driven in part by suspicions that a group linked to China had access to the model. Anthropic's spokesperson told Semafor that the government did not mention China during its export control discussions, and the White House has not confirmed the report.

Why it matters

If China's government had access to Mythos or Fable, it could pose a serious national security risk. The government could also attempt to reverse engineer the model through distillation, a method in which an AI is trained on a more advanced model to replicate its behavior. This is not Anthropic's first incident—the company previously disclosed that a Discord group had access to Mythos for two weeks before the breach was discovered.

What to watch

Anthropic has stated that Mythos is too dangerous and powerful for public consumption, yet the company denied Trump advisor David Sacks's reported claims that Fable and Mythos could be jailbroken. Anthropic has not responded to requests for comment on the broader security concerns.