Big Tech is worried the White House is about to junk its AI cheerleading and start regulating the shiny toys.
Vice President JD Vance told chief executives that new AI models such as Anthropic’s Mythos could find software vulnerabilities on their own. That raised fears they could spark cyberattacks against small-town banks, hospitals and water plants that local governments could not handle.
Vance told OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei, SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk, Alphabet chief executive Sundar Pichai and Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella: “We all need to work together on this.”
The April call followed a White House briefing that helped trigger alarm over the latest AI model capabilities. It set off a messy administrative response to Mythos that threatens to bring more government oversight and a rewrite of the White House tech agenda.
The worry for Big Tech is that the White House is shifting from its earlier talk of beating China in the AI race and stripping away barriers to model deployment.
The White House is considering an executive order that could create a formal oversight process for the most advanced models, which would put a spanner in the works for any AI expansion.
Administrative officials have asked Anthropic to delay expanding access to Mythos for more companies and organisations managing critical digital infrastructure.
The White House has put national cyber director Sean Cairncross in charge of its response to the model. That could include action on model safety or curbs on how private companies dictate government use of their tools.
Cairncross has moved to control access to Mythos, which has annoyed some administration officials who want more say in the process.
The White House unease has left some officials and congressional aides worried that Mythos has triggered a policy reversal and an overreaction, people familiar with the matter said.
The executive order under discussion has been welcomed by AI safety campaigners as a possible rebuke to the lighter-touch approach pushed by White House adviser David Sacks, a venture capitalist.
Sacks said recently on the “All-In” podcast: “People are treating this like some existential threat. I don’t think it is, as long as everyone does what they’re supposed to do by using the AI tools to bolster digital security.”
Administration officials insisted they were balancing oversight and innovation.
White House chief of staff Susie Wiles said on X: “The White House will continue to lead an America First effort that empowers America’s great innovators, not bureaucracy, to drive safe deployment of powerful technologies.”
An administration official said the White House remains committed to an industry-friendly AI strategy while addressing risks posed by Mythos and powerful models such as OpenAI’s GPT-5.5-Cyber.
