Anthropic’s
New A.I. Model Sets Off Global Alarms
Mythos
has triggered emergency responses from central banks and intelligence agencies
globally, as Anthropic decides who has access to the powerful model.
Paul
Mozur Adam
Satariano
By Paul
Mozur and Adam Satariano
Paul
Mozur, based in Taipei, Taiwan, and Adam Satariano, in London, cover global
technology issues.
April 22,
2026
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/22/technology/anthropics-mythos-ai.html
When
Anthropic told the world this month that it had built an artificial
intelligence model so powerful that it was too dangerous to release widely, the
company named 11 organizations as partners to help mount a defense.
All were
from the United States.
Within
two weeks, the model, called Mythos, had set off a global scramble unlike
anything yet seen in the A.I. era. Mythos, which Anthropic has said is
uncannily capable of finding and exploiting hidden flaws in the software that
runs the world’s banks, power grids and governments, had become a geopolitical
chip — and a U.S. company held it.
World
leaders have struggled to figure out the scale of the security risks and how to
fix them, with Anthropic sharing Mythos with only Britain outside the United
States. The Bank of England governor warned publicly that Anthropic may have
found a way to “crack the whole cyber-risk world open.” The European Central
Bank began quietly questioning banks about their defenses. Canada’s finance
minister compared the threat to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
For U.S.
rivals like China and Russia, Mythos underscored the security consequences of
falling behind in the A.I. race. One Russian pro-Kremlin outlet called the
model “worse than a nuclear bomb.”
The
responses illustrated a reality that A.I. researchers have long warned about
mostly in theoretical terms: Whoever leads in building the most powerful A.I.
models will gain outsize geopolitical advantages. Major A.I. breakthroughs are
beginning to function less like product launches and more like weapons tests,
and most nations want to understand how the technologies work and what
protections are needed.
As
foundational A.I. “models become more consequential, access becomes more
geopolitical,” said Eduardo Levy Yeyati, a former chief economist at the
Central Bank of Argentina and a regional adviser on growth and A.I. at the
Inter-American Development Bank. “I would take this episode as a policy wake-up
call. Governments can no longer ignore the issue.”
Even the
U.S. government, which has been embroiled in a clash with Anthropic over the
use of A.I. in warfare, has taken notice of Mythos. On Friday, Dario Amodei,
Anthropic’s chief executive, met with White House officials after some in the
Trump administration noted the potential for the new model to wreak havoc on
computer systems.
Anthropic,
which is based in San Francisco, told The New York Times that it was keeping
access to Mythos small because of safety and security concerns. It has focused
on sharing the model with more than 40 organizations that provide technology
used in maintaining critical global infrastructure like the internet or
electricity grids. Anthropic named 11 of the organizations, including Amazon,
Apple and Microsoft, that pledged to help develop security fixes for
vulnerabilities identified by the model.
The
company said that it had no immediate timeline for widely expanding access, but
that it would work with the U.S. government and industry partners to determine
next steps. It said that it had been bombarded by calls from governments,
companies and other organizations seeking access and information, but that
these organizations could have varying levels of expertise to safely evaluate
such a powerful A.I. model.
Anthropic
added that it expected other groups to release A.I. models with similar cyber
capabilities more widely within at least 18 months, giving organizations
limited time to make the necessary security fixes.
On
Tuesday, Anthropic said it was investigating a report that unauthorized users
gained access to a version of Mythos.
The
scramble over Mythos comes at a moment of minimal international cooperation on
A.I. Governments are viewing one another with suspicion as corporations race to
outpace rivals. There is no equivalent of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty,
no shared inspections and no agreed-upon rules for how to handle something like
Mythos.
When
Anthropic announced the model, many experts praised the company’s caution in
limiting who gets to try the model, but expressed concerns about the lack of
international coordination to deal with the risk.
Britain
was the only other nation to gain access. Its A.I. Security Institute, a
government-backed organization, tested Mythos and published an independent
evaluation last week, confirming that it could carry out complex cyberattacks
that no previous A.I. model had completed.
“This
represents a step up in A.I. cyber capabilities,” Kanishka Narayan, Britain’s
A.I. minister, said last week on social media, saying the country was taking
steps to protect “critical national infrastructure.”
Others
got less information. The European Commission, the executive branch of the
27-nation European Union, has met with Anthropic at least three times since the
Mythos release, an E.U. official said. But the company has not provided access
to the model because the two sides have not agreed on how to share it with the
commission, the official said.
In a
statement, the commission said it was “assessing possible implications” of
Mythos, which “exhibits unprecedented cyber capabilities.”
Claudia
Plattner, the president of Germany’s cybersecurity agency, known as B.S.I.,
said it had not received access to Mythos, but she met with Anthropic employees
in San Francisco recently for “meaningful insight” into how it works. The
capabilities point to “a paradigm change in the nature of cyber threats,” Ms.
Plattner said in a statement.
Among
U.S. rivals, the response has been more muted. Despite Anthropic’s recent clash
with the Trump administration, Mr. Amodei has made clear that A.I. should be
used to defend the United States and other democracies and defeat autocratic
adversaries.
Neither
Beijing nor Moscow has made a major public statement on Mythos. Inside China,
researchers and the broader A.I. community have been watching closely,
according to analysts studying the country’s tech community. Many of the
country’s banks, energy companies and government agencies run on the same
software in which Mythos found vulnerabilities — but for now, they have no seat
at the table.
“For China
I think this is the second wake-up call after ChatGPT,” said Matt Sheehan, a
senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He added that
a U.S. policy to prevent China from obtaining the most sophisticated
semiconductors for building advanced A.I. systems was helping to extend the
U.S. lead.
Some A.I.
researchers in China have privately expressed concern that the country could
fall further behind, missing out on advantages that come with building a
foundational model first, said Jeffrey Ding, a professor of political science
at George Washington University.
Liu
Pengyu, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said China was not
familiar with the specifics of Mythos but supported a peaceful, secure and open
cyberspace.
Mythos is
the latest sign of a growing global A.I. divide. Nations without powerful
computing infrastructure and A.I. models risk being left dependent on companies
like Anthropic, Google and OpenAI while having little sway over how their
products are designed and safeguarded, Mr. Yeyati said.
“The idea
that access to frontier A.I. is something a company can unilaterally restrict,
using criteria that are opaque and unappealable, should be a real concern,” he
said.
Paul
Mozur is the global technology correspondent for The Times, based in Taipei.
Previously he wrote about technology and politics in Asia from Hong Kong,
Shanghai and Seoul.
Adam
Satariano is a technology correspondent for The Times, based in London.
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