Beijing scrambles to close AI security gap as US labs pull ahead
Chinese regulators and companies are scrambling to close the gap with Anthropic and OpenAI on AI-driven cyber defence. Beijing wants its own equivalent to Anthropic's Mythos in the field within a year.
Anthropic's Mythos model, unveiled in April, sent shockwaves through the cybersecurity industry by discovering and exploiting vulnerabilities far faster than its rivals. With OpenAI's security tooling moving on a parallel track, Beijing reads the development as a direct technical threat to its strategic position.
A reorganised AI cybersecurity committee under China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has set a 12-month target to ship a publicly-backed Mythos equivalent. Alibaba Cloud, Tencent and Huawei are being steered to develop products for military and banking clients, while universities are receiving additional research funding to feed the pipeline.
On the market side, cybersecurity spending continues to grow despite a tight budget environment. Chinese analysts say catching the US technical lead in seven to twelve months is possible, but data quality and training-infrastructure gaps remain critical obstacles. They expect tech export controls to be one of the defining themes at the Trump-Xi summit.
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