Anthropic’s Mythos puts DC, Wall Street on high alert

The limited release of Anthropic’s new Mythos model is putting Washington officials on high alert after the AI firm’s warning about the model’s security risks sent shockwaves through and sparked debate in the tech industry.

Within days of being informed of Anthropic’s new technology, the White House ratcheted up a multipronged response involving Trump administration leaders across agencies to evaluate just how powerful AI is becoming.

Anthropic’s announcement follows years of AI warnings, but last week it seemingly landed differently, upping pressure on Washington to stay ahead even as some question the extent of the latest threat.

“A bunch of people in the [Trump] administration are coming to the realization” AI development has not plateaued as some officials predicted last summer, Dean Ball, the co-author of the Trump White House AI Action plan, told The Hill in an interview Monday.

“They are realizing, ‘My goodness, I’m going to have to jump in here and get involved and get my hands dirty’ because this is not being handled,’” said Ball, adding, “The administration was not prepared to deal with this, that’s just the frank reality.”

Anthropic announced last week it will hold back the full release of Claude Mythos Preview, claiming the model is too dangerous for the public at this stage.

The model was released to a small group of technology firms and critical software builders, which will use the model in their defensive security work and share their findings with Anthropic under a new initiative called Project Glasswing. Partners including Cisco, Google, and Palo Alto Networks came out in support of the project, with the latter company calling it a “game changer” for finding hidden vulnerabilities.

Mythos has already found thousands of high-security vulnerabilities, some of which date back more than two decades, according to Anthropic. While the tool can help governments find these vulnerabilities, it also makes it much easier for hackers to exploit these security gaps.

“This time, the threat is not hypothetical,” Anthropic’s researchers wrote in a Mythos assessment. “Advanced language models are here.”

Prior to external release, Anthropic briefed senior officials across the U.S. government on Mythos’s offensive and defensive cyber capabilities, an Anthropic official confirmed to The Hill on Monday. This includes conversations with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the Center for AI Standards and Innovation, the official said.

On the same day Project Glasswing was announced, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell convened a group of Wall Street executives to discuss the cybersecurity concerns, multiple people familiar with the meeting told The Hill.

Executives, including Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan and Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, attended the meeting, Bloomberg first reported. The Hill’s sources said several of the executives were already in Washington for the Financial Services Forum, an advocacy organization of the country’s eight largest banks.

Ahead of Anthropic’s announcement, Bessent also joined Vice President Vance on a call with a group of technology leaders, including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, xAI CEO and former Trump adviser Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, to discuss the security of xAI models, CNBC reported.

“There’s definitely a sense of urgency, it’s something that is relatively new. The AI has developed a way to find hacks in other software,” National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett told Fox News on Friday.

And later last week, The Wall Street Journal reported National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross will lead a group of federal officials to identify security vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure and strengthen government systems against AI exploitation.

When asked about this project, an official with the White House said it is “proactively engaging across government and industry, and that the federal government continues to “work with AI companies to ensure their models help secure critical software vulnerabilities.”

Some in the cybersecurity space welcome the efforts from Washington, saying the model is a “long time coming” as AI rapidly advances.

“I don’t think anyone can solve this alone,” Brad Medairy, the executive vice president of integrated cyber business at Booz Allen Hamilton, told The Hill. “I’m really encouraged, the federal government is being proactive and engaging and taking this seriously.”

“Our senior-most leaders in government are like, ‘let’s get after this,’” Medairy added.

“Cybersecurity has been top of mind for governments all over the world for many years,” said Gil Messing, chief of staff at Check Point, a cybersecurity vendor and government contractor. “But when you add such a powerful toolkit that in the past was either imaginary or only being used by superpowers [and] now it’s being commoditized … the threat is real.”

Wall Street was similarly receptive to warnings. Solomon told investors on Monday’s earnings call that the bank has access to Mythos and is working with Anthropic and other security vendors to bolster security.

“Cybersecurity has long been at the core of our business,” Solomon said. “This is part of our ongoing capabilities that we have been investing in and are accelerating our investment in. We’re aware of Mythos and its capabilities. We have the model. We’re working closely with Anthropic and all of our security vendors.”

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