Wall Street chiefs summoned over ‘nightmare’ Anthropic cyber threat

US regulators have summoned top Wall Street bosses to an urgent meeting over fears that a powerful new AI tool could turbocharge a haunting new wave of cyber attacks.

Scott Bessent, the US Treasury Secretary, and Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell urged top banking chiefs to be prudent risks raised by Anthropic’s Mythos.

The hastily arranged meeting – as first reported by Bloomberg – was convened to address potential risks to the financial system.

All banks in attendance are classified as systemically important by regulators, meaning a hit to the lender could provide a shock to the global financial system.

The chief executives of Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs were all a part of the meeting. 

Officials are understood to have urged banks to strengthen their cyber defences in response to emerging risks linked to Anthropic’s latest model, known as Claude Mythos.

AI ‘mythos’ sparks cyber alarm

The main concern centres around the model’s ability to actively exploit software weaknesses – a capacity that could dramatically shift the balance between cyber attackers and defenders.

Anthropic has said the system can find vulnerabilities across “every major operating system and every major web browser”, raising fears that bad actors could use such tools to crack encryption, uncover hidden flaws or automate sophisticated attacks at scale.

The tech titan has already identified thousands of previously unknown vulnerabilities using the model, including some dating back decades. In one case, a bug more than 25 years old was discovered.

In its own warning, Anthropic said AI systems are now outperforming “all but the most skilled humans” at finding and exploiting software flaws, adding that the potential fallout for economies and national security “could be severe”.

Crisis risk

The scale of the threat led Anthropic to limit access to the model, restricting it to a handful of tech firms as part of a controlled rollout known as project Glasswing.

The initiative, involving companies such as Apple, Microsoft and Amazon, aims to use the tech defensively to shore up critical systems before similar tools become widely available.

Regulators are increasingly worried that once that happens, the tool could enable faster, more scalable cyber attacks targeting critical infrastructure, including banks.

By convening systemically important lenders, US authorities appear to be seeking a coordinated response to mitigate risks before they escalate.

JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon – often considered the world’s most influential banker – is understood to have been unable to attend.

Dimon has been one of the loudest sceptics of the AI boom on Wall Street and has warned a bursting of the ever-ballooning AI bubble could cause economic havoc.

“The rising tide lifts all boats, everyone was making a lot of money… my own view is people are getting a little comfortable that this is real,” he said in February.

The American banker, who took home a $43m pay packet last year, has warned most people involved in the soaring prices of tech equities “won’t do well”.

During JP Morgan’s annual investor, Dimon said: “There will be a cycle one day, I don’t know when [there] is going to be a cycle, I don’t know what events will cause that cycle.

“My anxiety is high over it.”