‘Chinese request’ to Anthropic for the AI model that has scared banks and financial institutions has alarmed White House

A Chinese think tank representative cornered Anthropic officials at a closed-door Singapore meeting last month and pushed for access to Mythos—the AI model so good at finding software bugs that Anthropic won’t release it publicly. The company said no. When officials at the White House National Security Council heard about the exchange, they reacted with alarm, the New York Times reported on Monday.

The Singapore meeting was hosted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. It was a Track 2 dialogue—the unofficial kind that often paves the way for formal talks. US officials told the Times the request had almost certainly been approved by Beijing.