A US House committee is calling on Anthropic Chief Executive Officer Dario Amodei to testify about a Chinese cyber-espionage attack the company revealed earlier this month.

Leaders of the House Homeland Security Committee asked Amodei to appear before the panel on Dec. 17 to discuss the rise of AI-orchestrated cyberattacks. The committee also requested testimony from Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian and Quantum Xchange CEO Eddy Zervigon.

Anthropic didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. In a blog post on Nov. 13, the company said it disrupted a sophisticated AI-led espionage campaign from China that used the company’s Claude chatbot. The company described it as “the first reported AI-orchestrated cyber espionage campaign.” Anthropic said the Chinese state-sponsored group used Claude to attempt infiltration into “thirty global targets and succeeded in a small number of cases.”

“The operation targeted large tech companies, financial institutions, chemical manufacturing companies, and government agencies,” Anthropic said in the blog post. “We believe this is the first documented case of a large-scale cyberattack executed without substantial human intervention.”

House Homeland Security Committee Chair Andrew Garbarino in the letter said the panel is closely examining how advances “in artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing and related technologies, and hyperscale cloud infrastructure are reshaping both defensive capabilities and the operational tradecraft available to state-sponsored cyber actors.”

Garbarino wrote the CEOs can offer insight into securing cloud environments and integrating AI into cyber defense.

— By Emily Birnbaum (Bloomberg News)