Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark confirmed on Monday that the company is in active discussions with the Trump administration about its Mythos model, according to Reuters. Clark made the statement at the Semafor World Economy event in Washington, framing the outreach as separate from the company’s legal dispute with the Pentagon.
“We have a narrow contracting dispute, but I don’t want that to get in the way of the fact that we care deeply about national security,” Clark said, per Reuters. “Our position is the government has to know about this stuff. So absolutely, we’re talking to them about Mythos, and we’ll talk to them about the next models as well.”
The Contradiction in Full View
Clark’s remarks land in the middle of a policy collision within the Trump administration. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth designated Anthropic a “supply chain risk” after the company refused to remove safety restrictions on autonomous weapons and mass surveillance. The Pentagon blacklisting bars Anthropic from military contracts and directs defense contractors to stop using its technology.
A D.C. federal appeals court declined to block the Pentagon’s blacklisting last week, although a separate California federal court reached the opposite conclusion and issued a preliminary injunction.
At the same time, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell have been pushing in the other direction. The two summoned executives from JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley this week and encouraged them to test Mythos for cybersecurity vulnerability detection, Bloomberg reported. TechCrunch confirmed that all five banks are now reportedly testing the model internally.
Clark’s Strategic Framing
Clark’s language at the Semafor event was carefully chosen. By characterizing the Pentagon dispute as “narrow” and “contracting,” he separated Anthropic’s legal fight from its broader government engagement. The message: Anthropic will work with any part of the administration that wants access to its most capable model, regardless of what the Pentagon does.
The Next Web framed the situation as “the Pentagon paradox,” noting that every bank adoption of Mythos deepens Anthropic’s integration into critical financial infrastructure, making the supply chain designation increasingly difficult to sustain.
What This Means for Mythos Access
Clark’s statement that Anthropic will “talk to them about the next models as well” signals a longer-term engagement strategy. Anthropic is positioning itself as a national security asset, not a national security threat, by offering access rather than waiting for the legal system to resolve the Pentagon dispute.
Which agencies are involved in the discussions, and what access they would receive, remains unclear. Reuters noted the nature and details of the talks were “not immediately clear.”
UK regulators at the Bank of England, FCA, and HM Treasury are also reviewing risks posed by Mythos, with briefings for major British banks expected within two weeks, according to the Financial Times via TechCrunch.
This is a developing story. NCT previously covered the Treasury/Fed banking outreach and the Pentagon court proceedings.