AI giant Anthropic rebuffed an attempt from a Chinese think tank to gain access to its newest AI model, Claude Mythos, during a private meeting in Singapore, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

Anthropic unveiled Mythos in April, but has limited its release to around 40 American companies, which include Amazon, Apple and Microsoft, over concerns that it is so powerful it could threaten national security systems and potentially disable companies that use it. During the April meeting organized by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a representative from a Chinese think tank asked Anthropic officials to loosen their stance and give Beijing access to the AI model, The New York Times reported.

The request was not an official ask from the Chinese government, The Times reported, but Trump administration officials at the National Security Council were nevertheless alarmed. Some officials saw it as a daunting sign that Beijing will try to infiltrate American companies by any means possible to gain access to new and powerful AI models, according to the report.

China is meanwhile scrambling to build out an AI model as powerful as Claude that is focused on cyber defense and can compete with American products, according to a report from the South China Morning Post.

“Our assessment is that China’s own Mythos will definitely emerge, though currently the overall capabilities of its cybersecurity models are far from those of Mythos,” Austin Zhao, senior research manager at International Data Corporation (IDC) China, told the outlet. “But the overall trend is inevitable because the capabilities of China’s models are also rapidly increasing.” (Read more from “REPORT: AI Giant Resisted CCP Infiltration As US Extends Tech Lead Over China” HERE)