Exclusive: Anthropic CEO called to testify on Chinese AI cyberattack
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Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei testifying before the Senate in July 2023. Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images.
The House Homeland Security Committee has asked Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to testify at a Dec. 17 hearing on how Chinese state actors used Claude Code in a wide-reaching cyber-espionage campaign, according to letters first shared with Axios.
Why it matters: It would mark the first time an Anthropic executive appears before Congress about the espionage campaign disclosed earlier this month — the first documented case of an AI-orchestrated cyberattack.
Driving the news: House Homeland Security Chair Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.) sent letters to Amodei, Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian and Quantum Xchange CEO Eddy Zervigon requesting they testify at a hearing on the future of AI and cybersecurity next month.
- Reps. Andy Ogles, head of the House Homeland cybersecurity subcommittee, and Josh Brecheen, chair of the panel's oversight subcommittee, co-signed the letters.
The big picture: As AI rapidly intensifies the cyber threat landscape, lawmakers are just starting to wrap their heads around the problem and determine what policy levers they need to change to help Washington keep up.
- Garbarino has pushed for increased information sharing and stronger public-private coordination to help government and industry prepare for AI-driven attacks.
Zoom in: According to the letters sent Wednesday, lawmakers want to hear more about how nation-state hackers could use other AI tools to conduct similar attacks and how AI tools can be used to defend organizations.
- Kurian was asked to testify about how cloud providers are adapting their security strategies to fend off AI-driven attacks — especially given the U.S. government's reliance on private cloud services.
- Lawmakers requested that Zervigon, whose company provides security tools to protect against encryption-breaking quantum, testify on how emerging quantum technologies could be used in AI-orchestrated cyberattacks.
What they're saying: "For the first time, we are seeing a foreign adversary use a commercial AI system to carry out nearly an entire cyber operation with minimal human involvement," Garbarino said in a statement. "That should concern every federal agency and every sector of critical infrastructure."
- He added that "We cannot expect to counter autonomous, machine-speed cyber aggression from adversaries like China with human response times alone."
- Antonio Sanchez, chief strategy officer at Quantum Xchange, told Axios that Zervigon is planning to testify. "The combination of AI and quantum technologies are going to create a rapid pace of innovation never seen before," Sanchez added.
- Anthropic and Google did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
What's next: Executives have until Dec. 3 to confirm whether they'll testify.
Go deeper: The age of AI-powered cyberattacks is here
Editor's note: This story has been updated with a comment from Quantum Xchange.
