Anthropic co-founder says company briefed Trump administration on Mythos

Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark, who also serves as Head of Public Benefit at Anthropic PBC, confirmed that the company had briefed the Trump administration about its newly introduced Mythos AI model.

The model, unveiled last week, is considered so sensitive that it has not been released publicly, largely due to concerns about its advanced cybersecurity capabilities.

Speaking at the Semafor World Economy Summit, Clark explained why Anthropic continues to engage with the U.S. government even as it pursues legal action against it.

Earlier this year, Anthropic filed a lawsuit against the Department of Defence after the agency labelled the company a supply-chain risk. The dispute stemmed from disagreements over how the military could use Anthropic’s AI systems, particularly in areas such as mass surveillance and autonomous weapons. The contract in question was ultimately awarded to OpenAI instead.

At the summit, Clark downplayed the designation, describing it as a “narrow contracting dispute,” and emphasised that Anthropic remains committed to national security concerns.

“Our position is the government has to know about this stuff, and we have to find new ways for the government to partner with a private sector that is making things that are truly revolutionising the economy, but are going to have aspects to them which hit National Security, equities, and other ones,” Clark said. “So absolutely, we talked to them about Mythos, and we’ll talk to them about the next models as well.”

His comments follow reports that Trump administration officials have encouraged major financial institutions — including JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley — to explore and test the Mythos model.

Clark also discussed the broader societal impact of AI during the interview, touching on issues such as employment and education.

While Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has previously warned that AI could drive unemployment to levels seen during the Great Depression, Clark offered a more measured view. He said the company is currently observing only “some potential weakness in early graduate employment” across certain sectors, though it remains prepared for larger shifts in the job market.

When asked what academic paths students should consider in an AI-driven world, Clark avoided naming specific fields, instead emphasising the importance of interdisciplinary thinking and analytical skills.

“That’s because what AI allows us to do is it allows you to have access to sort of an arbitrary amount of subject matter experts in different domains,” Clark said. “But the really important thing is knowing the right questions to ask and having intuitions about what would be interesting if you collided different insights from many different disciplines.”