- A representative of a Chinese think tank approached Anthropic in Singapore to request the company share its latest AI model but was rejected.
- The U.S. government views this move as a signal that Beijing is seeking every possible way to access advanced AI technology from the U.S.
- The AI competition between the U.S. and China is increasingly compared by national security circles to the nuclear arms race during the Cold War.
- Anthropic’s new model, named Mythos, was announced in April 2026 but has not been released publicly because it possesses extremely powerful security vulnerability detection capabilities that could cause a “cybersecurity crisis.”
- Mythos is only provided to the U.S. government and over 40 organizations for cyber defense research and early attack detection.
- U.S. officials once estimated that U.S. AI was about 6 months ahead of China, but with Mythos and ChatGPT 5.5, the gap could now increase to 9 months to 1 year.
- China is still assessed to have the ability to catch up quickly, especially after the success of DeepSeek and the optimization of AI running on Huawei chips.
- Chinese analysts fear that Mythos creates a new “technological gap” and liken the disparity to “one side sharpening a sword while the other has deployed a Gatling machine gun.”
- Anthropic is considered “hostile to China” due to its priority in cooperating with U.S. national security and tightening technology access for organizations linked to Beijing.
- The U.S. currently aims to delay China’s access to advanced AI chips to maintain its cyber intelligence advantage and exploit Beijing’s sensitive systems.
- Meanwhile, Washington is also pressuring China not to release overly powerful open-source models due to concerns that global hackers could exploit them for large-scale cyberattacks.
📌 Conclusion: AI is shifting from a technological race to a national-level geopolitical competition. Anthropic’s Mythos and ChatGPT 5.5 are seen as giant leaps helping the U.S. widen the AI gap with China to up to one year. Notably, new models no longer just generate content but also possess the ability to detect vulnerabilities and support large-scale cyber warfare. U.S. chip restrictions, model controls, and tightening AI access are turning AI into a strategic asset similar to nuclear technology in the 21st century.
