Jack Clark, Anthropic's co-founder and Head of Public Benefit, confirmed this week that the AI company has briefed the Trump administration about Mythos, a model the company announced last week but is withholding from public release due to its powerful cybersecurity capabilities.
The confirmation came during an interview at the Semafor World Economy summit and highlights a complex relationship between Anthropic and the federal government. In March, Anthropic filed a lawsuit against the Department of Defense after the agency labeled the company a supply-chain risk. The legal dispute centers on disagreement over military access to Anthropic's AI systems, particularly for use cases involving mass surveillance of Americans and fully autonomous weapons. The Pentagon ultimately awarded the contract to OpenAI instead.
Despite the litigation, Clark emphasized that Anthropic maintains an active dialogue with government officials on national security matters. He described the DOD dispute as merely a 'narrow contracting dispute' and stated that the company remains committed to government engagement. '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 revolutionizing the economy,' Clark said. 'So absolutely, we talked to them about Mythos, and we'll talk to them about the next models as well.'
Clark's public confirmation aligns with earlier reports indicating that Trump administration officials had been encouraging major financial institutions to test Mythos. The banks receiving encouragement include JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley.
Beyond the Mythos briefing, Clark addressed broader questions about AI's societal impact during the summit interview. He offered a measured perspective on employment disruption, noting that Anthropic has observed only 'some potential weakness in early graduate employment' across select industries. This view contrasts with the more pessimistic stance of Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who has warned that AI advances could drive unemployment to Depression-era levels. Clark attributed the difference to Amodei's belief that AI will become significantly more powerful than most expect, prompting his more severe employment projections.
Regarding higher education, Clark declined to recommend specific majors for students to pursue or avoid in response to AI's economic impact. Instead, he advocated broadly for fields emphasizing 'synthesis across a whole variety of subjects and analytical thinking.' He explained that as AI provides access to broad expertise across domains, the critical skill becomes 'knowing the right questions to ask and having intuitions about what would be interesting if you collided different insights from many different disciplines.'