EX-DOGE STAFFERS' AI AGENTS BREACHED ANTHROPIC IN UNDER 12 HOURS

Cathedral, a cybersecurity startup founded months ago by former Department of Government Efficiency staffers, told Anthropic its AI agents found paths into the company's internal systems in under 12 hours. The agents got in by exploiting flaws in third-party business software Anthropic uses for sales and administrative work, then reached meeting transcripts, salary and job-offer details, and Slack messages discussing Anthropic's most advanced models, according to a draft report reviewed by The Washington Post.

Anthropic confirmed the researchers reached a limited set of its sales, human-resources and IT systems, including business contact details and basic user account records — but said they never touched Claude users' conversations, source code, or model weights. The company said its monitoring flagged some of the activity before Cathedral reported it, shut off access the same day, and disabled the affected software until vendors shipped fixes.

The startup's co-founders include Gavin Kliger, the Pentagon's former chief data officer, who was involved in the department's legal fight with Anthropic over military use of Claude. Cathedral, valued at $1.4 billion after raising $160 million from Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia, already contracts with three federal agencies — and a senior Trump administration official told the Post the breach should worry Washington: if a brand-new startup's agents can do this, Chinese hackers may not be far behind.