Mythos AI Freaks Out Wall Street: Bessent & Powell Pull Bank CEOs Into Emergency Room

U.S. regulators and top Wall Street bank chiefs held an urgent meeting to assess cybersecurity risks from Anthropic's AI model Mythos. Mythos can rapidly spot software flaws and craft sophisticated exploits, raising fears of systemic risks in the banking system. Its ability to uncover and weaponize zero-day vulnerabilities has spooked crypto and DeFi experts.

The meeting happened Tuesday, with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Fed Chair Jerome Powell sitting down with Wall Street bank CEOs to discuss possible cybersecurity risks linked to Mythos, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. Participants included chief executives from Citigroup Inc, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America Corp., Wells Fargo & Co., and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. All these are designated as systemically important, meaning disruptions to their operations could have global repercussions.

Mythos, an advanced artificial intelligence model developed by Anthropic, is designed to identify and exploit vulnerabilities in software systems when prompted. Unlike typical consumer-facing AI tools, Mythos is geared toward cybersecurity software engineering and cybersecurity tasks. Its specialty is identifying critical software vulnerabilities and bugs, but it can also assemble sophisticated exploits.

The episode highlights a fundamental change in how regulators are framing AI risk, not merely as a technological challenge, but as a potential catalyst for systemic events. This has already raised red flags in crypto, where experts are worried that Mythos' capability of discovering and exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities in real-time at a low cost poses risk to the DeFi infrastructure.

Anthropic has taken a cautious approach, releasing the product only for small group of large technology and financial firms under "Project Glasswing." The company has previously disclosed that it consulted with U.S. officials ahead of Mythos' release regarding both its defensive and offensive cyber capabilities. Anthropic is also separately engaged in a legal dispute with the Pentagon, which has designated it a supply-chain risk — a classification Anthropic is contesting in court.