AI models with advanced hacking capabilities like Anthropic’s Mythos should concern federal agencies that handle sensitive information, a top CIA tech official said.
“I think it is a reflection point and I think people need to view it in that fashion,” said Dan Richard, associate deputy director of the CIA’s Digital Innovation Directorate. Richard spoke on a panel Friday at the Qualys ROCon Public Sector 2026 conference in Tysons Corner, Virginia.
An early version of the Mythos software was released to a limited group of tech companies in April with much fanfare, due to its ability to find long-hidden software bugs and defects. Security researchers and experts reacted with a mix of excitement and caution, with some warning the software could usher in a new era for hackers and lower the barrier to entry for attackers. Mythos and competing models like OpenAI’s GPT-5.5 have forced executive agencies to grapple with their capabilities and prompted emergency briefings for lawmakers.
Richard said he feels “bullish in terms of the opportunities that are out there,” largely because these AI models can help agencies like the CIA deal with the deluge of data they generate and automate responses to potential threats. He likened the current Mythos-driven moment to Ukraine’s response to Russia’s invasion in 2022.
Ukraine “had gone through a decade of the Russians infiltrating their networks and having to deal with that implication, but when the Russians attacked in 2022 the Ukrainians were prepared because they understood they couldn’t do it themselves,” he said. “Shoulder-to-shoulder with them were the private sector vendors to support what they were doing and to help what they’re doing.”
Richard said the U.S. government is in the “same position” now, and public-private partnerships will be key to ensuring the nation gets it right.
“80% of our nation’s critical infrastructure is in private sector hands, so there is no solution that does not include private sector partners,” Richard said. “We talk about partnership all the time, but this is really different. This isn’t transactional. This is us, as a country, figuring out with the academic community, with the private sector community and with our public-sector partners working together to be able to defeat and take advantage of what I see as an optimal opportunity for the agency, but for the country.”
Joe Kelly, division director of the Applied Research Laboratory for Intelligence and Security at the University of Maryland, said advanced AI models are going to lower the barrier to entry for hackers.
“The real danger when we look at something like Mythos — whether you believe the hype or not — is it certainly creates what we already see with Claude Code, the ability for script kiddies to cause real damage even without knowing what they’re doing,” Kelly said. “It’s going to lift all those. I do worry about the complexity that we’re entering in this era.”
‘It’s moving so fast, it’s scary’
IonQ Chief Information Officer Katie Arrington, who served last year as the Pentagon’s chief information officer, said the influx of advanced AI tools — and the speed at which they’re emerging — will test government to the extreme. Existing governance requires IT security vulnerabilities be patched within 30 days, and 15 days for vulnerabilities designated “critical.”
“You don’t have time like that anymore,” Arrington said during a panel at the Qualys event. “We’re talking about a tool that can find every vulnerability in seconds on a platform.”
Arrington said these kinds of advanced AI models weren’t a discussion item even 12 months ago. At that time, the Pentagon was just trying to improve the speed that it could bring general AI tools into its networks.
“It’s moving so fast, it’s scary,” Arrington said. “It scares me and it excites me how fast Mythos came alive.”
Qualys CEO Sumedh Thakar said federal agencies may need to take a more proactive — rather than reactive — approach to risk management to deal with the growing range of threats from advanced AI tools. His company is using its AI-powered cybersecurity tools, including TotalCloud, which recently received authorization to operate in the government’s FedRAMP High environments, to allow customers to automate vulnerability patching, reducing some of the manual processes and “dashboard tourism” cyber professionals otherwise deal with.
Thakar said autonomous remediation allows savvy customers to “battle AI with the speed of AI.”
“Now with attackers leveraging AI, as soon as a patch comes out, they can reverse-engineer the patch and they can start to figure out the exploit. Your 30 days has become 30 hours, or three hours,” Thakar said. “What we really focus on is to get over the fear of autonomous remediation. It’s not an option.”
