Here's what I understand to be the premises behind Project Glasswing:

1. Mythos represents a leap in cyber security and hacking capabilities, among other capabilities.
2. Assuming #1, if Mythos (or a similarly capable AI) is released publicly, bad actors could use it to harm or control billions—even trillions—of dollars of cyber and software infrastructure.
3. Mythos can possibly be used proactively by good actors to defend against later uses of Mythos by bad actors.
4. Good actors exist and Anthropic has a chance of identifying such good actors.
5. A Mythos-level AI is highly likely to be publicly available in the near future.
6. Assuming premise #2 and #5, Anthropic doing nothing will result in massive damages in the near future.
7. Therefore, since Anthropic desires to mitigate damage, Anthropic is providing early access to Mythos to entities it views as good actors (or most likely to behave as good actors and to act within the timeframe necessary to mitigate the damages).

A few notes on these premises:

• Baked into premise #5 is that coordination is unlikely to prevent the release of a Mythos-level model on the necessary timeframe to prevent the damages.
• I focused on public releases in these premises, but I'm certain Anthropic is also weighing potential risks from non-public models held by bad actors.
• If you accept premise #6 and #4, it explains why Anthropic would take a chance that Amazon, Apple, etc. and their employees will act like good actors. Even if these entities (or their employees) were unlikely to behave as good actors, Anthropic presumably sees the alternatives of pushing for a pause or doing nothing as likely yielding worse outcomes. Of course, Anthropic could provide early access to Mythos AND push for a pause.
• Looking to future post-Mythos models, either something like the above premises will just repeat (which feels untenable) or defense will turn out to be king past a certain level of sophistication.