China Urged to Develop Own AI Cybersecurity Model to Counter US Tech Advantage

China must develop its own equivalent to Anthropic’s Mythos model to counter the cybersecurity risks posed by the artificial intelligence era, according to 360 Security Technology founder Zhou Hongyi, who likened the powerful US technology to a “cyber nuclear weapon”.

Released in April with the ability to autonomously identify software vulnerabilities, Mythos has accelerated vulnerability discovery a hundredfold while slashing costs – a “terrifying change” that had effectively “democratised” cyberattacks, Zhou said at a cybersecurity conference in Beijing on Wednesday.

The US had been “astute” in creating the Project Glasswing alliance, under which Anthropic in April granted more than 40 organisations access to Mythos Preview to strengthen their cyber defences, Zhou said.

China had been excluded from the initiative, putting the country at a strategic disadvantage, he said.

“This means US organisations can use Mythos to scan your vulnerabilities, but you don’t even have the qualification to catch a glimpse of Mythos,” Zhou said.

China’s cybersecurity industry, therefore, needed its own version of Mythos, a “game-changing weapon in cyber warfare” that “cannot be held solely in the hands of others”, the 56-year-old founder said.

A domestic equivalent would give China a “reciprocal strategic deterrence capability”, similar to the way nuclear-armed states deterred one another, Zhou argued.