Defense Department CTO Emil Michael said Friday that Anthropic is still a supply chain threat, but that Mythos, the company’s artificial intelligence model with advanced cyber capabilities, is “a different time for national security.”
“I think the Mythos issue that’s being talked about across the government, not just the Department of Defense, is a different time for national security where we have to make sure that our networks are strong, because that model has special capabilities to detect cyber threats and contain them,” Michael told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Friday.
Michael’s comments come after a heated dispute between the DOD and Anthropic that became public earlier this year. The DOD declared Anthropic a supply chain threat, meaning its technology threatens US national security, after the two sides failed to agree on how Anthropic models could be used by the agency.
Due to the designation of supply chain risk, defense contractors should ensure that they do not use Anthropic’s Claude models in their work with the military. Anthropic sued the Trump administration in March to try to reverse the Pentagon listing.
It is not clear how the DOD can implement Anthropic’s Mythos model without violating the supply chain risk designation.
Michael said Friday that the DOD is still looking for guardrails, and that those are “negotiating based on what they are with all the companies, and they have different opinions on that.”
On Friday, the DOD announced that it has entered into agreements with seven AI companies that will deploy their technology across the agency’s decentralized networks for “official use.” Those companies include GoogleOpenAI, Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon Web ServicesSpaceX, which is integrated with Elon Musk’s xAI, and Reflection, a startup developing open mass models.
OpenAI announced it had struck a deal with the Pentagon hours after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared Anthropic a supply risk in late February. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman later admitted that the timing “looked opportunistic and sloppy,” in a post on X.
Michael’s comments on Friday indicate that Mythos has complicated the DOD’s efforts to sideline Anthropic. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei met with senior Trump administration officials at the White House earlier this month to discuss the model, which both sides described as a “productive” conversation.
After the meeting, President Donald Trump told CNBC that “it’s possible” there will be an agreement between Anthropic and the DOD. Trump said the company is “very smart” and “could be a big help.”
Beyond the definition of supply chain risk, the DOD has been using Anthropic models to support its military efforts in the Iran war. The National Security Agency, which is part of the DOD, reportedly uses Mythos, according to Axios.
“From a national security perspective, you have to always look at those things,” Michael said Friday. “NSA and Commerce are testing all border models, including China’s border models, to see what capabilities are at the edge.”
Anthropic’s lawsuits against the Trump administration in San Francisco and Washington, DC are ongoing.
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