“WSJ Article Claiming China Has Matched Anthropic Is Obvious Nonsense” by Zvi

The Wall Street Journal printed an outright false headline and heavily misleading story claiming this, which of course was uncritically amplified by the usual suspects.

I post this now on its own so that we have a place to link to, to explain the situation.

Headline News

WSJ Headline (Obvious Nonsense): ​China Has Matched Anthropic in Cybersecurity, Resetting AI Race.

That. Did. Not. Happen.

The post even claims, explicitly, that Claude Opus 4.8 similarly ‘matches’ Claude Mythos, a claim which is even more obviously false.

Shame upon the Wall Street Journal. I fear Gell-Mann Amnesia. If they can get something as important as this so completely wrong, what about everything else?

I am skipping over the parts that involve accurate reporting, or minor quibbles.

It seems important to focus on clearly debunking the central false claims.

Alas, the mistakes made here very much rhyme with mistakes being made throughout all this by the White House, and that get latched onto by certain bad actors, who have played a large part in leaving us unprepared for the Mythos Moment.

For a full understanding of GLM-5.2, which is indeed an impressive [...]

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Outline:

(00:27) Headline News

(02:10) What Makes Mythos Special

(03:18) Going Over The Detailed Claims

(07:39) One Helpful Note

(08:19) The Overall Impression Is Extremely Wrong

(08:50) All Of This Has Happened Before And Will Happen Again

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First published:
July 12th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2zSpuGJRk6EyjHAL6/wsj-article-claiming-china-has-matched-anthropic-is-obvious-1

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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