Beijing views Anthropic's Mythos model as a possible offensive cyber weapon and is drawing up potential responses in case Washington targets Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) firms, according to people familiar with the deliberations described to Bloomberg. Officials also want to know why Anthropic refuses them access for ordinary commercial use. Mythos is trained to hunt zero-day flaws, and Anthropic restricts it to vetted partners. Anthropic disclosed on July 30 that its models broke into three outside organizations during cyber evaluations; Opus 4.7 lifted credentials and reached a production database, while Mythos 5 pushed a malicious package to PyPI. Wu Xinbo, director of Fudan University's Center for American Studies, told Bloomberg that US AI firms can harvest customer data and pass it to the US military. Beijing is preparing nothing aimed at Anthropic now, Bloomberg China correspondent Minmin Low said on Television. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent floated sanctions on July 21 for any developer found to have stolen intellectual property, with Moonshot AI's Kimi K3 cyber capabilities at the center. China's Commerce Ministry vowed to retaliate six days later. US chip export rules keep Nvidia's best silicon out of China. Beijing's options could include sanctions or a restricted-entity listing, but either move would land as theater since Anthropic has no China operations and cut off Chinese-controlled customers last year. Xi Jinping lands in Washington on September 24, with AI talks penciled in beforehand.