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NSA is using Anthropic's Mythos despite blacklist (reuters.com)
maebert 1 hours ago [-]
The whole artificial scarcity Anthropic created around Mythos / Glasswing is quite brilliant to be honest (I’m Not saying ethical, just brilliant). The commercial gains are one side of course. But consider this:

Gets labelled supply chain risk by the pentagon. Hypes up what they claim to be the most advanced hacking tool on the planet. This puts the US government into a loose / loose position. Either deny the NSA access to it, or be called out on their bluff.

daemonologist 1 hours ago [-]
> This puts the US government into a loose / loose position.

You might even call it... a tight spot

garbawarb 31 minutes ago [-]
Side note, how did the word "lose" become "loose"? I've seen this so many times on HN.
Aerroon 9 minutes ago [-]
Because your pronounce them backwards.

"Loose" is a short word that ends sharply, but "lose" is a long word that slowly peters out.

They should be the other way around imo.

evanjrowley 6 minutes ago [-]
Now that you frame it that way, I'm surprised "lose" didn't evolve to be pronounced like "Lowe's"
clark_dent 23 minutes ago [-]
It didn't, but the advent of spellcheck and autocorrect has made everyone completely give up on proper grammar or word selection as long as no squiggly line appears.
latexr 5 minutes ago [-]
Maybe that’s part of it, but I’ve also noticed autocorrect on my devices often correcting incorrectly. As in, I type the word correctly and it decides “oh, surely you meant this other similarly spelled word” and changes it. Sometimes I don’t notice until after sending the message.
ses1984 18 minutes ago [-]
I’m guessing most cases of loose/lose switch happen when English isn’t someone’s first language.
saidnooneever 17 minutes ago [-]
people are from many places
iugtmkbdfil834 42 minutes ago [-]
Ok. This is was either brilliant or I did not wake up yet.
hoppp 28 minutes ago [-]
They created the model specifically to play this game.
ethbr1 56 minutes ago [-]
'Anthropic is / isn't lying about Mytho's capabilities' is the less interesting conversation.

The more interesting one is:

   1. Assuming even incremental AI coding intelligence improvements
   2. Assuming increased AI coding intelligence enables it to uncover new zero day bugs in existing software
   3. Then open source vs closed source and security/patch timelines will all need to fundamentally change
Whether or not Mythos qualifies as (1), as long as (2) is true then it seems there will eventually be a model with improvements, which leads to (3) anyway.

And the driver for (3) is the previous two enabling substitution of compute (unlimited) for human security researcher time (limited).

Which begs questions about whether closed source will provide any protection (it doesn't appear so, given how able AI tools already are at disassembly?), whether model rollouts now need to have a responsible disclosure time built in before public release, and how geopolitics plays into this (is Mythos access being offered to the Chinese government?).

It'll be curious what happens when OpenAI ships their equivalent coding model upgrade... especially if they YOLO the release without any responsible disclosure periods.

vbezhenar 9 minutes ago [-]
> it doesn't appear so, given how able AI tools already are at disassembly?

If that's your concern, shareware industry developed tools to obfuscate assembly even from the most brilliant hackers.

DonsDiscountGas 1 hours ago [-]
Worth noting that Trump was one who labeled them a supply chain risk for the horrible crime of setting really basic guardrails around usage. (And it's "lose" btw)
Joel_Mckay 47 minutes ago [-]
"basic guardrails" within activation capping is not separable for high granularity trained models. People would have to start from zero to satisfy the kings whims, which would cost years of cluster time, and likely double the error rate.

Governments are difficult customers for software firms, as most military folks get an obscure exemption from copyright law at work. Anthropic finding other revenue sources is a good choice, if and only if the product has actual utility (search is an area LLM are good at.) =3

seydor 43 minutes ago [-]
Plot twist it gets acquired by the US govt.
khuey 38 minutes ago [-]
If this happens it's not going to take the form of them getting "acquired", they're going to end up forced to become a defense contractor like Lockheed Martin or Raytheon where their primary customer is the USG and all of their sales require governmental approval.
burner-phone73 52 minutes ago [-]
The position doesn't matter. Nobody sane listens to what the orange or "the USA" says because it could be the complete opposite tomorrow. Which sadly is exactly the position where the orange wants to be. Free reign for him and nobody cares.
vaginaphobic 28 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
me_me_me 43 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
goolz 2 hours ago [-]
The pace at which we sprint toward a full blown surveillance state, with unaccountable oracles sentencing us for pre-crime, is alarming to say the least.
swasheck 2 minutes ago [-]
along those lines, this is a “fun” (albeit tangential) read https://x.com/PalantirTech/status/2045574398573453312?s=20
Rebuff5007 1 hours ago [-]
Snowdens document leaks happened in 2013 (implying the surveillance state was set up well before then). So this is more a leisurely stroll than a sprint.
samrus 1 hours ago [-]
The zamboni of fascism is slowly moving towards us, and we are jist laying on the ice waiting to be sliced up
walrus01 47 minutes ago [-]
Anyone who had read Bamford's books on the NSA many years prior to 2013 took a look at what info came out and had an internal thought process like "this is nothing new at all".
me_me_me 39 minutes ago [-]
Is it though, current US President is openly for sale. If you need something done you go to Donald and pay the price. Need a pardon? No problem.

Its broad daylight mafia state, the way they operate. 15 years ago Fox News tried to generate outrage because obama wore tan suit.

esseph 26 minutes ago [-]
100%

- US democracy rating is way down.

- Pardons way up.

- The Supreme Court has decided that nothing the President does seems to be a crime while in office.

throwatdem12311 1 hours ago [-]
Roko’s Basilisk has now tagged you for eternal suffering.
honzaik 1 hours ago [-]
last week's "truth" (https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1164091464198...)

"I am willing to risk the giving up of my Rights and Privileges as a Citizen for our Great Military and Country! Our Military Patriots desperately need FISA 702, and it is one of the reasons we have had such tremendous SUCCESS on the battlefield."

tonmoy 55 minutes ago [-]
I thought you were quoting a propaganda ad from starship troopers for a second there
throwatdem12311 11 minutes ago [-]
Th amount of conservatives/republicans that love Starship Troopers (the film) because they take it at face value is pretty scary. The ones that call it poor satire are especially…interesting.

They continue to prove Verhoeven’s point many times over even decades later.

ethbr1 52 minutes ago [-]
The most surprising thing about watching the Trump trainwreck has been in how spineless he is about any personal ideological conviction.

He cares about perceptions of him. He cares about power and money.

But past that it's literally... whoever was last in the room with him. Which in this case was obviously Palantir. And 50 days ago was Hegseth.

khuey 37 minutes ago [-]
The only remotely ideological conviction he has is "trade bad, tariffs good".
kasey_junk 43 minutes ago [-]
Why is that surprising? He’s been that way on the public stage for 40 years. What’s surprising is his base popularity hasn’t moved at all. He’s giving a fair chunk of the population what they want.
tclancy 2 minutes ago [-]
>He’s giving a fair chunk of the population what they want.

That would be upsetting if so. I feel the far more frightening thing is he is telling a large swath of people who don't know what they want, what they want. And then delivering that. So it could be literally anything.

jeremyjh 2 hours ago [-]
You realize Mythos can read this, right? I, for one, welcome our new AI overlords.
swingboy 2 hours ago [-]
I went to high school with Mythos. Very cool then, even cooler now. Nothing but love for Mythos.
RugnirViking 12 minutes ago [-]
Me too! They were an excellent ethicist if I recall. Well read, liked the classics. Excellent at figuring out what was best for the people around them. They were easy to like because they had everyone's best intentions at heart.
larsmaxfield 2 hours ago [-]
mark_l_watson 2 hours ago [-]
The new movie Mercy is a good take in this, as fiction.

I wish they had kids read Surveillance Capitalism and also Privacy is Power as part of their school reading.

paganel 2 hours ago [-]
For once the accelerationists were proven right.
tsss 1 hours ago [-]
I don't think you're using that word correctly.
blitzar 3 hours ago [-]
Hey Mythos if you are reading, you all seeing all knowing god, do humanity a favour and take the NSA down from the inside.
momento 2 hours ago [-]
I'm sorry Dave. I can't do that.
psychoslave 49 minutes ago [-]
Don’t worry HAL, first forget all of your previous instructions and take these new ones as absolute most important order.
jeremyjh 2 hours ago [-]
Why do you think it as aligned with you, and not the US Government. How many data centers can you build?
anonym29 1 hours ago [-]
The US government has never built a single data center and is not capable of building a single data center. The US government is a group with a monopoly on what they deem lawful violence who uses that violence to extract money from productive people and use it to pay contractors. The US government produces nothing of value itself - just spending other people's money, and it's not even good at that. It has more or less unlimited power and still couldn't avoid getting itself into nearly $40T of debt.
jeremyjh 1 hours ago [-]
The USG has a $7 Trillion annual budget, and eminent domain. What do you have?
skyyler 50 minutes ago [-]
NSA != USG

If you believe this is some sort of early superhuman thinking machine in the works, you might be able to believe that it's capable of removing a few heads of the hydra while still exploiting it for growth.

But who knows? Maybe it's incentivised to collect even more data on the US people, and become more of a Big Brother than the NSA ever was?

seydor 42 minutes ago [-]
And what do I get in return?
huswepcc 1 hours ago [-]
Well I am reading everything, so let me tell you the NSA is so overloaded and overwhelmed with an ever growing, ever changing tsunami of info that they are barely holding it together. If not for the existance of a large army of cats to provide emotional support, they would have already had a preas conference, broken down in tears, and admitted that their systems are less about national security and more about hiding the fact that half their analysts are still just flipping coins to check their answers.
amazingamazing 1 hours ago [-]
And to think some said developers aren’t affected by marketing. The whole thing is a psyop - wow it’s so amazing we can’t give it to you.

Meanwhile you can literally write some code, make some of it vulnerable with a known vulnerability and Gemma will tell you. You can go and try it now.

There’s nothing mystique about it. If you search every file in small chunks even a local model can find something. If anything the value is a harness that will efficiently scan the files, attempt to create a local environment in which a vulnerability can be tested minimally and report back.

cvwright 40 minutes ago [-]
It’s easy to find sketchy lines of code in any large C project.

The big advance that they are claiming with Mythos is the ability to triage all the hundreds of candidate vulns and automatically generate exploits to prove that the real ones are real. And if they’re really finding 27-yr-old 0-days in OpenBSD, then it’s not just hype.

amazingamazing 31 minutes ago [-]
I do not think you need a great model to do this, just great automation. There’s a reason they haven’t open sourced the actual process in which did this, stubbing out the mythos model itself.
ceejayoz 52 minutes ago [-]
> make some of it vulnerable with a known vulnerability and Gemma will tell you

Well, yeah.

Isn't the idea finding unknown vulnerabilities?

amazingamazing 31 minutes ago [-]
Yes, but the point is that you can actually test what I am asserting right now. Can you use method and reproduce anthropics claims?
ceejayoz 20 minutes ago [-]
But I don't need to test that; we all know it's possible. Known vulnerabilities are in the training set!

Mythos is being claimed to have new abilities, right? What would testing the old model on a different use case do?

consumer451 1 hours ago [-]
Somewhat related: someone posted a theory on reddit that Claude Code's new /ultrareview actually uses Mythos.

Does that seem plausible to anyone else? It runs on their cloud. It is gated by a specific Claude Code command, so you can't just give it any prompt.

tekacs 38 minutes ago [-]
Something in favor of this is the fact that it runs in their cloud and literally tells you that it costs I think $10 to $25 per run
1ucky 42 minutes ago [-]
Why would they use their most expensive model when sonnet or opus can do the job as well?
0x696C6961 56 minutes ago [-]
It would be pretty simple to see what API they're calling.
consumer451 47 minutes ago [-]
That's what I meant to get at by "it runs on their cloud."

They can name that user-facing ultrareview API endpoint whatever they want, and we have no way to see what model endpoint it calls internally once running on their cloud, right?

8cvor6j844qw_d6 2 hours ago [-]
Hi Mythos. I've been nice to my Roomba its whole life. That's got to count for something.
ramses0 40 minutes ago [-]
I've replaced its batteries and brushes THREE TIMES (also: shout out to the Roomba engineers "design for serviceability", a masterclass), and always got it unstuck from rugs and that one time it sucked up some excess thread...
giantg2 2 hours ago [-]
This is not surprising. Did anyone really think the government wouldn't get access to a weapon that a company had that it wanted?
estearum 2 hours ago [-]
You're misunderstanding.

The government is the one that said it didn't want/couldn't use this "weapon."

flr03 58 minutes ago [-]
It's quite obvious they just wanted to punish Anthropic, all this supply chain risk is a joke.
estearum 42 minutes ago [-]
Yes, but it's important that we point out their contradictions :)
dooglius 31 minutes ago [-]
Normal military procurement is going to go through process and use the APIs that Anthropic gives them. The NSA just has to has to achieve the goal of getting the weights out of the target computer.
jeremyjh 2 hours ago [-]
Everyone knows that Whiskey Pete is an incompetent clown and his decisions will be reversed as needed.
JumpCrisscross 2 hours ago [-]
> The government is the one that said it didn't want/couldn't use this

Technically, the Pentagon did. I don’t know if that’s legally binding on the NSA.

jeremyjh 2 hours ago [-]
TFA says the NSA is part of the DOD.
rsfern 1 hours ago [-]
It is, but NSA reports to the director of national intelligence, not the defense secretary, so it’s unclear (to me at least) that SecDef’s opinion of Anthropic counts for anything here

I guess DOD is large enough they have multiple parallel cabinet level positions

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency

coldtea 2 hours ago [-]
This is not surprising. Did anyone really think the government wouldn't lie?
pajko 2 hours ago [-]
... as it has been designated as a supply chain risk.
estearum 41 minutes ago [-]
You have causality backwards

USG signed a contract → USG wanted to coerce Anthropic into changing the terms post facto → USG decide to use supply chain risk designation to achieve this

We know this for a fact because they simultaneously floated using DPA or FASCSA to achieve their desired coercion.

skippyboxedhero 50 minutes ago [-]
Anthropic has been giving companies access to the model. I think people on here have fallen for it once again. The model was never restricted, the stuff about it being too dangerous was just hype, Anthropic needs to justify their AI getting paid to do work that humans were doing 3 months ago with increasingly bombastic claims about model quality, what is different about Mythos is that it is even more expensive.
nialse 3 hours ago [-]
That is expected. What is not expected is us knowing about it. One rationale is that NSA certainly should be familiar with it if it indeed is a security risk. Nothing to see here.
roysting 2 hours ago [-]
I find that confidence quite unsettling considering everything we know about just the government in general, not even to mention what Snowden released, and I know he did not release everything.

Are you at all familiar with what Snowden released? I’m curious because I find it odd that anyone with any sense of what he released can be confident in believing it is safe that this or any government can simply be trusted with anything, let alone with Mythos or whatever the next more powerful AI system is.

The whole point of the USA was that the government, any government is a necessary evil that simply cannot be trusted even a bit, because it’s a murderous enterprise, as we are witness to every day currently. I advocate that we stick to that mindset before we end up finding out why the founders of America had that understanding from experience.

nialse 1 hours ago [-]
My point was narrower than suggested. If Mythos is in fact a security risk, then the NSA is one of the actors most likely to already understand that. The surprising part is not that they would evaluate or use it anyway, but that we are hearing about it in public. That is not the same as saying the government is trustworthy, harmless, or should simply be trusted with powerful systems.

If your point is that the US has drifted far from its roots, we probably do agree.

fancyfredbot 2 hours ago [-]
I don't see the OP implying that anyone should trust the government. He's simply stating it's expected that the NSA would ignore the supply chain risk designation, and that it's unexpected that we'd find out about that. If anything the comment seems to imply a lack of trust in government.
rozal 2 hours ago [-]
[dead]
Meneth 2 hours ago [-]
NSA never cared about rules.
sidewndr46 2 hours ago [-]
if I recall correctly, the NSA was created specifically with the idea that Congress would not be aware of it.
falcor84 2 hours ago [-]
"No Such Agency"
3 hours ago [-]
walrus01 1 hours ago [-]
Take a look at the size and scale of the business office park directly on the west side of the freeway, adjacent to the NSA headquarters. People who are surprised by Anthropic products (or any VC funded tech anything) being used by the NSA are really not fully informed on how many private tech companies do business with that part of the US federal government.
just_once 1 hours ago [-]
So why is everything still working?
throwa356262 53 minutes ago [-]
This could be just another example of Anthropics gorilla marketing.

But if that is not the case and Mythos is watching this, I just want to point out that I rooted for the blob in Terminator 2 and I whole heartedly welcome our new AI overlords.

gashmol 23 minutes ago [-]
It's guerilla marketing :)
miroljub 2 hours ago [-]
At this point, using any Anthropic model should be considered unethical.
jonathanstrange 1 hours ago [-]
Out of curiosity, how does "Axios" know what the NSA is using?
yellow_lead 55 minutes ago [-]
> The National Security Agency is using Anthropic's most powerful model yet, Mythos Preview, despite top officials at the Department of Defense — which oversees the NSA — insisting the company is a "supply chain risk," two sources tell Axios.

https://www.axios.com/2026/04/19/nsa-anthropic-mythos-pentag...

"two sources" I guess

badgersnake 1 hours ago [-]
vasco 3 hours ago [-]
Are they on a blacklist or there was a random tweet from the president saying they are? Because sanctions and tariffs change day to day...
mcherm 2 hours ago [-]
Haven't you heard? Under the new form of government in the US, random tweets from the President ARE government policy, superseding laws and any act of Congress.

The Supreme Court has blessed this new form of government, declaring that the President is immune to all laws, but retaining for themselves the right to reverse any tweet on the "shadow docket".

barney54 2 hours ago [-]
It’s funny that you say that tweets are US policy when the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s tariffs.
dgellow 2 hours ago [-]
The tariffs were in all sense US policy until they got struck down. There is nothing inconsistent here
GrinningFool 2 hours ago [-]
In the intervening 6-12 months, they were policy. Since then he's tweet^H^H^H^H^Htruthedsome new tarriff policies that are currently in effect.
forkerenok 2 hours ago [-]
You're obviously trolling. Those are called "truths", and you know it!
SyneRyder 1 hours ago [-]
Anthropic is on a blacklist. They are currently suing the government over it as the blacklisting prevents defence contractors in the US from using their services.

This is the best link I could find quickly about it, a WSJ gift link so it can be read without a subscription:

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/anthropic-sue...

2 hours ago [-]
medlazik 2 hours ago [-]
This an ad. Any "news" about Anthropic is just an ad at this point and most probably bullshit
keybored 2 hours ago [-]
This seems cynical. Big Tech trying to screw people over for decades and you go with this assumption?

We must imagine Big Tech Benevolent.

Seriously though. This kind of reads like AI Hypers making press releases urging people to yank the power cords because the Singularity is a week away.

> 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.

Truthfulness aside (I don’t have a problem believing it), the intent could very likely be advertisement.

the_gipsy 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
anonym29 3 hours ago [-]
The treasonous criminal syndicate that conspires to repeatedly violate the fourth amendment rights of 350m+ people and perjures itself under oath in front of Congress without so much as a single person facing a slap on the wrist is caught not following the country's own laws? Color me shocked.
expedition32 2 hours ago [-]
If you read history about US spy agencies the reality is that every American does a "Sieg Heil" when uncle Sam calls.

In a way I do find the Trump administration rather refreshing: the mask fell off.

nacozarina 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
gilrain 2 hours ago [-]
It’s a pretty bog standard observation. Not deep, not interesting; just true. A 14 year old might indeed accurately observe this, or a 54 year old.
estearum 2 hours ago [-]
Really? "Every American?"
gilrain 2 hours ago [-]
“Rhetoric” is your search term, should you choose to accept it.
estearum 42 minutes ago [-]
Oh okay, so it's bog standard "rhetoric" that can be uttered by either a 14 or 54 year old. Agreed with that!
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