US security agency is using Anthropic’s Mythos despite blacklist, report says

WASHINGTON – The United States National Security Agency (NSA) is using Anthropic’s Mythos Preview AI tool despite the Pentagon hitting the company with a formal supply-chain risk designation, news site Axios reported on April 19.

The Mythos Preview model was being used more widely within the department, Axios said, citing sources. Reuters could not immediately verify the report.

Anthropic, the NSA and the Department of Defense did not immediately respond to requests for comment outside regular business hours. The NSA is part of the Department of Defense.

Last week, US President Donald Trump’s administration and Anthropic’s chief executive discussed working together for the first time since a dispute earlier in 2026 between the Pentagon and the AI company over how the company’s models should be used.

The talks came amid growing fears the artificial intelligence start-up’s latest model Mythos will supercharge cyberattacks.

The model is the company’s “most capable yet for coding and agentic tasks”, Anthropic has previously said, referring to the model’s ability to act autonomously.

Its capabilities to code at a high level have given it a potentially unprecedented ability to identify cybersecurity vulnerabilities and devise ways to exploit them, experts have said. REUTERS