America is entering a new AI arms race, but its own government is struggling to keep up. The US military, intelligence agencies and defense contractors are rapidly adopting artificial intelligence for cybersecurity, weapons, intelligence and national defense.
The New York Times reported that critical tests are underway to understand whether Mythos could hack highly protected foreign networks. The NSA is testing Mythos for both defense and offensive cyber operations. What has changed, she argued, is that AI could dramatically increase the speed and scale of those attacks. Easterly made the comments to The New York Times.
Officials said the agency is using the technology to test American military networks while also searching for weaknesses in networks belonging to countries including China, Russia, North Korea and Iran. Former Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency chief Jen Easterly said the basic threats existed even before AI became a major headline.
But the government’s policy has a major loophole: open AI models are exempt from the review process. These models can have their code customized by users, meaning they can potentially be modified for dangerous purposes. America’s AI policy has also been inconsistent when it comes to Nvidia’s advanced chips. The Trump administration has repeatedly changed its position on whether advanced Nvidia chips should be sold to China. This has created a difficult balancing act for the White House. Restricting American AI companies too heavily could push foreign countries toward Chinese AI models, while weak regulation could increase the risk of dangerous AI systems being used against the United States.
Because they can also create serious risks, the New York Times reported that one technology executive briefed on the policy questioned why open models were excluded. Because powerful AI models require enormous amounts of computing power to train and operate, these chips are crucial.
Chris McGuire, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former Biden administration official, described the administration’s export-control policy as “incoherent,” according to The New York Times.
The New York Times reported that this debate is now shaping US national security policy. The central argument is becoming a race between safety and speed. Supporters of faster AI development fear that stricter rules could cost America its roughly six-month lead over China, while critics worry that moving too quickly could allow dangerous systems to escape human control. Washington has also struggled to create consistent rules for the most powerful AI models.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration brought executives from major AI companies including OpenAI and Anthropic into discussions about reviewing new models for risks involving biological weapons, classified US systems and communications networks linked to nuclear weapons.
