Coercive governance instruments create offense-defense asymmetries when applied to dual-use capabilities because access restrictions affect defensive and offensive agencies asymmetrically

The Trump administration's supply chain designation of Anthropic—deployed as coercive pressure—has created a structural asymmetry in US cybersecurity capabilities. CISA, the agency responsible for defending civilian infrastructure, cannot access Mythos (Anthropic's most powerful cybersecurity AI) due to the designation's restrictions. Meanwhile, NSA apparently retains access for offensive cyber operations. This reveals a fundamental property of coercive governance instruments applied to dual-use technologies: access restrictions affect defensive and offensive agencies differently because they operate under different legal authorities and procurement pathways. The designation was intended to pressure Anthropic into compliance, but its actual effect is to degrade defensive cybersecurity posture while maintaining or enhancing offensive capabilities. This is compounded by simultaneous DOGE-driven CISA budget cuts, which reduce defensive capacity precisely when Mythos has increased the threat surface for AI-powered attacks. The governance instrument is producing the inverse of its stated security objective—not through adversarial action, but through the internal logic of how access restrictions interact with organizational boundaries between offense and defense.