Bessent, Powell warned bank CEOs about Anthropic model risks, sources say
April 9 (Reuters) – U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell held an emergency meeting with bank CEOs this week to warn about cyber risks posed by Anthropic’s latest artificial intelligence model, two sources familiar with the matter said on Thursday.
White House national economic adviser Kevin Hassett confirmed the meeting during an interview on Fox News’ “The Story with Martha MacCallum.”
“Bankers were in town that day for meetings, and it was appropriate for Secretary Bessent to do what he did. He brought them into the Treasury with Jay Powell and went through cyber risks to make sure they were aware of them,” Hassett said, adding that the Trump administration had taken steps to ensure the public was protected from potential risks.
Anthropic released its powerful Mythos model this week but failed to achieve wide release, citing concerns that it could reveal previously unknown cybersecurity vulnerabilities.
The company said the model can detect and exploit vulnerabilities in “every major operating system and every major web browser.”
Last week, Anthropic said it was in ongoing discussions with U.S. government officials about the model’s “offensive and defensive cyber capabilities.”
A third source familiar with the matter echoed Anthropic’s assistance and said the company was proactively briefing senior U.S. government officials and key industry stakeholders on Mythos’ capabilities ahead of its launch.
The meeting hosted by the Treasury in Washington on Tuesday was aimed at ensuring banks are aware of the risks posed by Mythos and similar models and take steps to defend their systems, one of the sources said.
The invitations were sent at a time when many of the CEOs of the largest US banks were in Washington to attend other meetings, one of the sources said.
The startup said access to Mythos will be limited to approximately 40 technology companies, including Microsoft and Google.
Bloomberg News, which first reported the story on Thursday, said Citigroup CEOs Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs were present at the meeting. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon will not be able to attend, one of the sources told Reuters.
Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo and the Federal Reserve declined to comment. Treasury, lenders and Anthropic did not respond to Reuters requests for comment.
Treasury Canada, the Bank of Canada and bank executives met Friday to discuss cybersecurity, a ministry spokesman said. AI and Anthropic’s new AI model were topics of discussion, the spokesperson said.
(Additional reporting by Saeed Azhar in New York, Carlos Méndez in Mexico City; Disha Mishra in Bengaluru; Jasper Ward in Washington and Promit Mukherjee in Ottawa; Writing by Chris Thomas; Editing by Sumana Nandy, Rod Nickel)
