00:00I think we start with the reported meeting, but right now there is constant headlines about Anthropic's relationship with the
00:10federal government.
00:13Ed, this is a little bit of a twist in the whole saga.
00:16You know, since the beginning of the year, we've seen this increasing feud between Anthropic, the developer of Claude, and
00:23now Mythos,
00:23over what degree of safeguard should be included in its product, and it culminated in that Pentagon declaration of the
00:31company and its systems as a supply chain risk
00:35and prompting a company lawsuit to get that designation overturned.
00:40Really an extraordinary turn of events, and yet now the technology has forced another.
00:45And this is the prospect that its newest product, Mythos, could be so powerful and so good at identifying cyber
00:52vulnerabilities
00:53that it can't be released widely beyond a handful of technology firms and Wall Street banks that really have that
01:03kind of trust
01:04and also would need to be able to vet their own systems.
01:07And in a way, this really kind of brings us closer to the remote possibility that has been talked about
01:13by policymakers and others for years
01:16that there could be a devastating cyber attack that takes out critical infrastructure or disrupts the financial system.
01:23Mike, what have those in Washington, what have those close to the administration made of this sort of contradictory relationship
01:31going on at the moment?
01:32And the fact that they're trying to freeze them out from a supply chain headache risk in one sense, I
01:36mean, extraordinary step taken.
01:38And on the flip side, outside of the Pentagon, they seem to be working with the Treasury Department,
01:42and we understand we'll eventually be working with other federal agencies.
01:46Well, this really is the question of the moment.
01:49And it seems to be that they are looking past the conflict that they're having between the company and the
01:54Pentagon for the moment simply because they need to.
01:58The urgency of it requires that the Treasury Department not only engage and test the system on its own networks
02:06to make sure that there are no vulnerabilities ever.
02:09Remember, the Treasury handles all manner of payments to U.S. citizens, Social Security, you name it,
02:15and then also performs critical market functions that could be disrupted if hackers were able to penetrate those networks.
02:23So they really have an agenda, and so do many other agencies.
02:27So for the White House to line up access, which it currently does not have to meet those for all
02:33these agencies,
02:34is something seen as important, and it is putting in the back seat this whole question of whether the Pentagon
02:42should be insisting
02:43that Anthropic drop its demands for safeguards on its products and military use.
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