The White House is convening AI companies "this week" for table-reads of a draft executive action that would, among other steps, allow federal agencies to bypass the Pentagon's supply-chain risk designation on Anthropic and onboard the company's models — including the cyber-focused Mythos. [1] Two sources told Axios the EO is being used "to save face and bring em back in." The paper's May 6 standard on the two-track architecture named the workaround.

Pentagon CTO Emil Michael told CNBC's Squawk Box on May 1 that Anthropic remains a supply-chain risk but Mythos is "a separate national security moment where we have to make sure that our networks are hardened up." The Pentagon simultaneously announced agreements with seven other AI companies — Google, OpenAI, Nvidia, Microsoft, AWS, SpaceX (which absorbed xAI), and Reflection — for "lawful operational use" in classified networks. [2] Anthropic was excluded.

The legal track sits on top. A federal judge issued a temporary injunction on the Pentagon's risk designation in late March; the government has said it intends to appeal. [3] Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei met White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Treasury Secretary Bessent in April; Trump told CNBC Anthropic was "shaping up." The civilian-use EO is the off-ramp the Pentagon is not taking — and the architecture that lets civilian agencies move while litigation runs. [4]

-- THEO KAPLAN, San Francisco