China Draws Up Retaliation Options Over US Restrictions on Anthropic's Mythos
China is preparing potential countermeasures against American AI companies in response to US restrictions on access to Anthropic's Claude Mythos model, according to Bloomberg.
Chinese officials have questioned the Trump administration's decision to block foreign access to Mythos and Anthropic's Fable model, and are reportedly drawing up response options that include sanctions or outright bans on American AI companies if the US imposes further restrictions on technology and AI.
People familiar with the matter told Bloomberg that no immediate action is planned, but the preparations signal Beijing's growing concern about being cut off from advanced AI capabilities developed in the United States.
Mythos has emerged as the most capable AI model for cybersecurity tasks, able to rapidly identify vulnerabilities, generate exploit code, and autonomously attack computer systems. The model has effectively collapsed the window between vulnerability discovery and exploitation, leaving defenders with little time to patch.
The Trump administration blocked Anthropic from providing Mythos and Fable to foreign nationals on June 12. Anthropic later said on June 30 that the administration had lifted the directive and that foreign access to Fable had been restored, though the status of Mythos access remains less clear.
The tension comes as Chinese AI models continue to gain traction globally. CNBC reported that the share of tokens used by American companies on Chinese AI models via OpenRouter has remained above 30 percent each week since February, compared to a 12-month average of just 11 percent. While Chinese models are not as advanced as their American counterparts, they are cheaper and largely open-source.
The standoff over Mythos represents the latest escalation in the technology conflict between the two countries, following US restrictions on Nvidia's advanced chips and recent limits on foreign-made robots and inverters.
**Sources**
- Firstpost: China is anxious about Mythos being used as an offensive weapon (https://www.firstpost.com/world/china-anxious-about-mythos-being-used-as-offensive-weapon-ai-report-14035880.html)
- Bloomberg (https://www.bloomberg.com)
