Fed Lacks Access to AI Model It Warned Banks About
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- Federal Reserve officials and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent convened top bank CEOs in April to warn that Anthropic's Claude Mythos Preview posed an unprecedented cybersecurity threat, yet the Fed went at least three months without access to the model itself.
- Kevin Warsh, who replaced Jerome Powell as Fed Chairman, told the Senate last week he remains "asking for access not just for the Federal Reserve but for other institutions" to Mythos and other cutting-edge AI models so they "can protect themselves."
- Anthropic expanded Project Glasswing to more than 150 organizations across 15 countries in June, naming JPMorgan Chase, Amazon, Apple, and Google among roughly 50 initial participants — but the Fed was not included, surprising Futurum Group CEO Daniel Newman.
- Anthropic was forced to disable access to Mythos 5 and the more widely released Fable 5 in June to comply with a federal export control directive citing "national security authorities," before Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick restored access for "trusted partners."
- David Sacks, who stepped down as White House AI and crypto czar in March, posted on X that Chinese startup Moonshot AI's newly released Kimi K3 model — which outperforms OpenAI and Anthropic on some industry benchmarks — is "concerning," warning: "This is how you lose the AI race."
- Chris Fall resigned as director of the Center for AI Standards and Innovation just three months after the Trump administration appointed him, deepening a leadership vacuum as the Fed was still seeking Mythos access.
Why it matters: The Fed flagged a cybersecurity threat it couldn't defend against for months while Anthropic's selective rollout — 50 organizations initially, 150 across 15 countries in June — left the central bank out. Federal export controls forced Mythos 5 offline, and Fall's exit plus Sacks's earlier departure compound a leadership vacuum as China's Kimi K3 surpasses U.S. models on key benchmarks.
