Bessent, Powell warned bank CEOs about Anthropic model risks, sources say

By Saeed Azhar

April 9 (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury ‌Secretary Scott Bessent and ​Federal ​Reserve Chair Jerome Powell convened an urgent meeting with bank CEOs this week to warn of 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 with Fox News' "The Story with Martha MacCallum."

"Those bankers were in town for meetings that day, and it was appropriate (for) ‌the Secretary Bessent to do what he ‌did. He brought them over to the Treasury, along with Jay Powell, and went through the cyber risks to make sure that they were aware of them," Hassett said, adding that the Trump ​administration is taking steps to ensure the public is safe from potential risks.

Anthropic launched the powerful Mythos model this week but stopped short of a broad release, citing concerns it could expose previously unknown ⁠cybersecurity vulnerabilities.

The company has said the model is capable of identifying and exploiting weaknesses across "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 close to the matter reiterated Anthropic's ​outreach, saying the company proactively briefed senior U.S. government officials ‌and key industry stakeholders on Mythos' capabilities ahead of its release.

The Treasury-hosted meeting in Washington on Tuesday was aimed at ensuring banks are aware of the risks posed ⁠by Mythos and similar models and are taking steps to defend their systems, one of the sources said.

Invitations were sent while most CEOs of the largest U.S. banks were already in Washington to attend other meetings, one of the ⁠sources said.

Access to Mythos will be limited to about 40 technology companies, including Microsoft and Google, the startup has said.

Bloomberg News, ​which first reported the story on Thursday, said the CEOs of Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs were present. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon was unable to join, one of the sources told Reuters.

Goldman Sachs, Wells ‌Fargo and the Federal Reserve declined to comment. The Treasury, lenders and Anthropic did not respond to Reuters' requests for comment.

Canada's Finance Ministry, the Bank of Canada ‌and bank executives met on Friday to discuss cybersecurity, a ministry spokesperson said. AI and Anthropic's new AI model ⁠were topics of discussion, the spokesperson said.

(Reporting ‌by Saeed Azhar in New York, ​Carlos Méndez in Mexico City; Disha Mishra in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Jasper Ward in Washington and Promit Mukherjee in Ottawa; Writing by Chris Thomas; Editing by Sumana Nandy, ‌Rod Nickel)

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