Here's something that doesn't happen every Tuesday: the Treasury Secretary and the Federal Reserve Chair summoning the CEOs of America's biggest banks to Washington for an urgent chat about artificial intelligence. But that's exactly what happened this week, according to reports.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Fed Chair Jerome Powell reportedly gathered the banking elite to warn them about cybersecurity risks posed by Anthropic's newly launched AI model, Mythos. The meeting took place on Tuesday at the Treasury Department, and it sounds like the kind of gathering where the coffee is strong and the concerns are even stronger.
Who Got The Summons?
When the Treasury and Fed call, you answer. The CEOs of Citigroup (C), Morgan Stanley (MS), Bank of America (BAC), Wells Fargo (WFC), and Goldman Sachs (GS) were all present. JPMorgan (JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon was the notable absence, reportedly unable to join.
The purpose? To make sure the country's most systemically important banks—the ones where if something goes wrong, everything goes wrong—are fully aware of the potential risks and are actively strengthening their defenses. It's the financial equivalent of checking your locks before a storm hits.
So What's Mythos?
Anthropic launched a preview of Mythos on Tuesday, the same day as this high-level meeting. They paired it with a new cybersecurity initiative called Project Glasswing, where 12 partner organizations will use the model for defensive security work and to scan critical software for vulnerabilities.
Here's the part that probably got regulators' attention: the company says Mythos has already identified thousands of zero-day vulnerabilities—many of them one to two decades old—across major operating systems and web browsers. Think of it as an AI that can find security holes that humans have been missing for years.
According to reports, Anthropic briefed senior U.S. government officials about Mythos' capabilities—both offensive and defensive—before launching Project Glasswing. That includes the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which is basically the country's digital immune system.
The Pentagon Problem
Meanwhile, Anthropic finds itself in a legal tangle with the Pentagon. Earlier this week, a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., declined to temporarily block the Pentagon's decision to label Anthropic a national security risk.
The Donald Trump administration classified the company as a supply-chain concern after it refused to ease safeguards on its Claude chatbot for uses like surveillance or autonomous weapons. So on one hand, you have regulators worried about AI security risks to banks, and on the other, you have the military concerned that the AI isn't being made available enough for certain uses.
MarketDash reached out to the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, Anthropic, and the banks for comment. Most hadn't responded at the time of publication, and Goldman Sachs declined to comment.
What's clear is that as AI capabilities advance at breakneck speed, regulators aren't waiting around to see what happens. They're getting the financial system's most important players in a room and saying, essentially, "Heads up—this could be a game-changer, and we need to be ready."
