{"id":16295,"date":"2026-04-25T05:39:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T05:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/16295\/"},"modified":"2026-04-25T05:39:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T05:39:12","slug":"straight-out-of-sci-fi-anthropic-makes-trump-blink-in-ai-showdown-san-diego-union-tribune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/16295\/","title":{"rendered":"Straight out of sci-fi: Anthropic makes Trump blink in AI showdown \u2013 San Diego Union-Tribune"},"content":{"rendered":"

The April 7 announcement<\/a> by Anthropic \u2014 that its new Mythos model was far more powerful and thus far more dangerous than any previous AI tool \u2014 increasingly appears to be a pivotal moment in human history. On Tuesday, The New York Times reported<\/a> that it had set off \u201cglobal alarms\u201d at central banks, in intelligence agencies and among government leaders across the world.<\/p>\n

Driving the reaction, the Times said, was independent confirmation that Anthropic was right: Mythos is \u201cuncannily capable of finding and exploiting hidden flaws in the software that runs the world\u2019s banks, power grids and governments.\u201d Reporters Paul Mozur and Adam Satariano wrote that this \u201cillustrated a reality that AI researchers have long warned about mostly in theoretical terms: Whoever leads in building the most powerful AI models will gain outsize geopolitical advantages. Major AI breakthroughs are beginning to function less like product launches and more like weapons tests.\u201d<\/p>\n

This gives a fascinating new dimension to the dispute<\/a> between the Pentagon and Anthropic over the $200 million contract the San Francisco-based company signed in July 2025 to assist with U.S. military needs. In December, it was reported that Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei balked at the Pentagon\u2019s demand that its AI models could be used by the U.S. government for \u201cany lawful purpose.\u201d Amodei cited the concern that Anthropic technology would be used for fully autonomous lethal weapons<\/a> whose decisions were made without human involvement \u2014 and the potential for AI to be used for mass domestic surveillance on an unprecedented scale.<\/p>\n

This led President Trump to question Anthropic\u2019s patriotism and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to not just cancel its 2025 contract but have Anthropic formally designated as a \u201csupply chain risk\u201d on March 5<\/a>. This prohibited any company doing business with the U.S. military from doing business with Anthropic \u2014 a seemingly profound threat to Anthropic\u2019s future, given the Pentagon\u2019s status as the world\u2019s deepest-pocket customer for firms selling advanced technology.<\/p>\n

Anthropic sued in response. But what it didn\u2019t do is panic at the prospect that the Pentagon\u2019s sanctions would cripple Anthropic to the great benefit of rival firms led by OpenAI.<\/p>\n

This suggests that Amodei believed Anthropic had more leverage on the Pentagon than the Pentagon had on it \u2014 the CEO of a company founded just five years ago shrugging off a threat from the world\u2019s most powerful and best-funded entity.<\/p>\n

And this in turn suggests that the better fictional model to view AI\u2019s rise is not the \u201cTerminator\u201d movies, in which Skynet becomes self-aware and plots to eradicate humanity. Instead, it\u2019s James Bond thrillers like \u201cMoonraker,\u201d \u201cTomorrow Never Dies\u201d and \u201cNo Time to Die\u201d in which wealthy geniuses believe their technology makes them able to stand up to or overcome any government.<\/p>\n

This is especially so because this week in the Trump administration-Anthropic showdown \u2014 after Amodei met with White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to discuss Mythos<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 the president blinked.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re very smart, and I think they can be of great use,\u201d he said Tuesday on CNBC. \u201cI think we\u2019ll get along with them just fine.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is of course impossible to know where this will all lead. But after seeing a president back down from a tech CEO in such a freighted dispute, the old rules start to feel very far away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The April 7 announcement by Anthropic \u2014 that its new Mythos model was far more powerful and thus…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16296,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[53,11905,1651],"class_list":["post-16295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anthropic","tag-anthropic","tag-editorials","tag-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16295\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}