Trump Controls AI Access at NATO

U.S. President Donald Trump arrives at the annual NATO leaders' summit in Ankara next week with significant leverage over the military alliance: his country possesses the world's most advanced artificial intelligence technology and can decide which allies gain access to it. Several U.S. security and intelligence agencies, including the National Security Agency and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, have already tested Anthropic's Claude Mythos model to determine how the technology can best support digital espionage and cyber defense efforts.

This push-and-pull by the Trump administration to control access to American AI tools has frustrated European allies and prompted a rare warning from members of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance to global leaders to 'swiftly' step up security against AI-powered cyber threats. An official with knowledge, granted anonymity to discuss private conversations among NATO members, said that cyber, AI and emerging technologies will be mentioned briefly in the official statement outlining NATO policies set to be released at the end of the summit.

Meanwhile, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has spent much of his time since taking office almost two years ago trying to keep the United States anchored to the alliance, employing outright flattery to dissuade Trump from acting on threats to abandon it. At a White House meeting last month, Rutte presented a chart labeled 'The Trump Trillion' in gold letters, showing $1.2 trillion in spending by European allies and Canada since 2017, in an attempt to put any lingering concerns to rest.