US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Federal Reserve Chair held an urgent meeting with the chief executives of banks this week to warn them about cybersecurity risks posed by Anthropic’s latest AI model, Reuters reported on Thursday, citing people aware of the matter.
The high-level meeting comes after Anthropic rolled out its powerful model earlier this week but held back from a broader release, citing concerns that the system could expose previously unknown cybersecurity vulnerabilities, the agency report said.
Anthropic is also currently engaged in a conflict with the US Department of Defense. The dispute arises from the AI company’s refusal to allow the federal government to use its Claude AI for domestic mass surveillance or autonomous weapons systems.
What risks does ‘Mythos’ pose?
Anthropic, led by Dario Amodei, has said that the latest model is capable of identifying and exploiting weaknesses across “every major operating system and every major web browser”.
According to the news report, Anthropic said last week that it has engaged in discussions with US government officials about the model’s “offensive and defensive cyber capabilities.”
Another source told Reuters that the AI firm has proactively briefed senior US government officials and key industry stakeholders on Mythos’s capabilities ahead of its release.
Bessent and Powell convened top bank CEOs in Washington on Tuesday to ensure the banks were aware of the cybersecurity risks posed by Anthropic’s Mythos AI model. They urged banks to recognise the dangers posed by Mythos and other similar models and to strengthen their systems.
According to the report, officials sent invitations while most CEOs of the largest US banks were already in Washington for other meetings.
Access to Mythos to be limited
Anthropic said it will limit access to the latest Mythos AI model to about 40 technology companies, which include software giants such as Microsoft and Google.
Bloomberg News, which first reported the matter on Thursday, said the CEOs of Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs were present at the meeting. Meanwhile, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon was unable to join, one of the sources told Reuters.
US court declines to block Anthropic’s blacklisting
A federal appeals court on Wednesday declined to block the Pentagon’s national security blacklisting of for now, indicating a major win for the Trump administration. The decision comes after another appeals court reached an opposite conclusion in a separate legal challenge by Anthropic.
The issue stems from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s designation of the company as a national security supply-chain risk for its refusal to remove certain usage guardrails on its products. The label blocks Anthropic from Pentagon contracts and could trigger a government-wide blacklisting.
Anthropic executives have also said earlier that the designation could cost the company billions of dollars in lost business and reputational harm.
