White House Meets Anthropic CEO Amid AI Model Dispute

White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles met with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei on Friday to discuss the artificial intelligence company’s new Mythos model. The meeting comes amid a dispute between the AI startup and the Pentagon over the use of its advanced AI model.

The U.S. government is planning to make a version of Anthropic's frontier AI model Mythos available to major federal agencies despite concerns that the tool could sharply increase cybersecurity risk. Announced on April 7, Mythos is being deployed as part of Anthropic's Project Glasswing, a controlled initiative under which select organizations are permitted to use the unreleased Claude Mythos Preview model for defensive cybersecurity purposes.

The potential meeting follows reports that federal agencies and government officials are quietly sidestepping U.S. President Donald Trump’s ban on working with Anthropic. The Commerce Department's Center for AI Standards and Innovation is actively testing Mythos’ hacking prowess, according to Politico. Staff on at least three congressional committees have held or requested briefings from the company to learn about Mythos' cyber scanning capabilities over the past week.

Mythos has found thousands of major vulnerabilities in operating systems, web browsers, and other software. Its high-level coding capabilities give it an unprecedented ability to identify cybersecurity vulnerabilities and devise ways to exploit them. Gregory Barbaccia, federal chief information officer at the White House Office of Management and Budget, told Cabinet department officials in an email that the OMB was setting up protections to allow their agencies to begin using Mythos.

A White House official said the administration is engaging with advanced AI labs about their models and the security of software. The official stressed that any new technology that might be used by the federal government would require a technical period for evaluation. Anthropic said in a statement that Amodei’s meeting included senior administration officials and explored how the San Francisco-based company and the U.S. government can work together on key shared priorities such as cybersecurity, America’s lead in the AI race, and AI safety.

The White House described the meeting as productive and constructive, highlighting opportunities for collaboration while balancing innovation and safety. The tensions between the Trump administration and Anthropic have been high, with President Trump attempting to stop all federal agencies from using Anthropic’s chatbot Claude due to a contract dispute with the Pentagon. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sought to declare Anthropic a supply chain risk, which the company has challenged in two federal courts.

Anthropic has said that Mythos is so 'strikingly capable' that it is limiting its use to select customers because of its ability to surpass human cybersecurity experts in finding and exploiting computer vulnerabilities. The model’s potential benefits and risks have also attracted attention outside the U.S., with the United Kingdom’s AI Security Institute evaluating the new model as a significant advancement.