U.S. Treasury Secretary Bessent and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell summoned CEOs of five biggest Wall Street banks to the Treasury headquarters in Washington on April 7, focusing on the cybersecurity risk posed by Anthropic’s latest frontier model Claude Mythos Preview. The attendees included Citigroup’s Jane Fraser, Morgan Stanley’s Ted Pick, Bank of America’s Brian Moynihan, Wells Fargo’s Charlie Scharf, and Goldman Sachs’ David Solomon. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon was absent. All the banks are designated as systemically important financial institutions (SIFIs), signaling the meeting targeted the most critical nodes in the U.S. financial system.
Mythos Model: Decades-Old Flaws Unearthed, Exploit-Ready
Anthropic stated that Claude Mythos Preview surpasses prior models in computer security tasks. It has discovered thousands of high-severity vulnerabilities, including a bug hidden in OpenBSD for 27 years, a defect in video encoder FFmpeg that escaped 5 million automated tests, multiple unpatched flaws in the Linux kernel, and zero-day exploits in every major operating system and web browser. More crucially, under user instruction, Mythos can weaponize those vulnerabilities, write executable exploit code, and chain multiple flaws into a complete attack pipeline—autonomously executing complex hacking tasks. Anthropic has said it will not release Mythos publicly for now, warning that if it falls into malicious hands, it could herald a new era of cyberattacks.
Same Week Setback: Appeals Court Rejects Stay on Pentagon Ban
On April 8, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals denied Anthropic’s motion to halt the Pentagon’s “supply chain risk” designation, ruling the company failed to meet the strict requirements for emergency relief. However, the court agreed to fast-track the case, with oral arguments scheduled for May 19. The backstory: in February 2026, Anthropic wrote to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, stating Claude must not be used for autonomous weapons or mass surveillance. President Trump then directed the Department of Defense to list Anthropic as a supply chain risk, requiring all defense contractors to certify they do not use Claude. A federal judge in California temporarily blocked the designation in late March; the D.C. ruling goes the opposite direction, potentially creating a circuit split.