U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell called top bank executives to an urgent closed-door meeting this week to alert them to the cybersecurity dangers posed by Anthropic’s newly launched Mythos model, according to three people familiar with the gathering quoted by Reuters.

The Tuesday session at Treasury headquarters came just days after Anthropic released the powerful system — but stopped short of a full public rollout, explicitly citing the risk that it could reveal and weaponize previously unknown vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure.

The company has described Mythos as capable of identifying and exploiting weaknesses across “every major operating system and every major web browser.” It has already surfaced thousands of high-severity flaws, including bugs that had lain dormant for nearly three decades.

Last week, Anthropic confirmed it was engaged in ongoing discussions with U.S. government officials about the model’s “offensive and defensive cyber capabilities.” A source close to the company said it had proactively briefed senior officials and key industry players ahead of the limited launch.

The meeting’s purpose was to make sure the largest U.S. banks understand the emerging threats from Mythos and similar frontier models and are moving aggressively to fortify their systems. Most CEOs were already in Washington for other meetings, allowing Treasury to convene the group on short notice. Among those present were the chiefs of Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Goldman Sachs. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon was unable to attend.

Access to Mythos remains tightly controlled. Only about 40 carefully vetted technology companies, including Microsoft and Google, have been granted use under Anthropic’s Project Glasswing, an initiative aimed at using the model to hunt for and patch vulnerabilities in critical open-source code before adversaries can exploit them.

The gathering reflects deepening official anxiety that advanced AI has crossed a threshold where its ability to discover and chain exploits at machine speed could dramatically shift the balance between attackers and defenders.

For banks, which safeguard trillions in customer assets and sit at the center of the payments system, the stakes are existential. A single successful AI-augmented breach could cascade into systemic instability far beyond any one institution.

The warning to the financial sector lands amid a broader, intensifying campaign by the U.S. government to limit Anthropic’s reach in sensitive areas. The Pentagon shows no sign of easing its pressure on the company. Earlier this week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit denied Anthropic’s request for a temporary stay, upholding the Defense Department’s designation of the startup as a “supply chain risk.”

In unusually direct language, the appeals court wrote that the “equitable balance here cuts in favor of the government,” noting that the alternative would amount to “judicial management of how, and through whom, the Department of War secures vital AI technology during an active military conflict.”

That ruling keeps Anthropic locked out of Pentagon contracts and bars defense contractors from using Claude on military-related work, even as the company retains access to other federal agencies under a separate court injunction.

The blacklisting, the first of its kind against a major U.S. AI firm, was triggered by Anthropic’s refusal to grant the Pentagon unrestricted access to its models for “all lawful purposes,” a stance rooted in the company’s self-imposed guardrails against fully autonomous weapons and domestic mass surveillance.

Together, the Treasury-Fed briefing and the Pentagon’s legal victory paint a picture of a government increasingly determined to treat frontier AI models as dual-use technologies requiring careful containment. While Mythos is positioned by Anthropic as a tool for proactive defense, accelerating the discovery of vulnerabilities that human teams might miss for years, officials clearly worry it could just as easily empower sophisticated nation-state actors or criminal groups.

However, the message from Washington to banks was that the era of treating AI cyber tools as just another software upgrade is over. With Mythos already demonstrating breakthrough offensive capabilities, institutions are being told they must assume that adversaries, state-sponsored or otherwise, will soon have access to similar technology.

The question now is whether the financial sector can move fast enough to close the gaps before the model’s controlled release inevitably leaks into wider use.

In the broader AI arms race, Tuesday’s meeting and the appeals court’s reinforcement of the Pentagon’s stance underscore a growing reality: the U.S. government is no longer content to let the private sector self-regulate at the frontier. When models can both defend and attack the nation’s most critical systems, Washington intends to set the rules of engagement.

Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz remains far below normal levels even after the U.S.-Iran ceasefire, heightening concern over the possibility of a permanent peace deal.

The Strait of Hormuz remained severely disrupted on Friday, underscoring that the ceasefire between the United States and Iran has done little, at least for now, to restore normal flows.

According to vessel-tracking data, only 15 ships had entered or exited the strait since the ceasefire was announced on April 8, a fraction of the prewar average of about 138 to 140 vessels a day. The numbers point to a waterway that is technically open but functionally constrained. This is the crucial distinction now confronting oil markets, insurers, and Asian importers.

A ceasefire can halt active hostilities, but it does not automatically restore navigational confidence, war-risk insurance cover, or the operational certainty needed for hundreds of tankers to resume passage through a militarized chokepoint.

The Strait of Hormuz is not merely another shipping route. It is the single most important oil transit corridor in the world, handling close to 20% of global crude and petroleum-product flows, much of it bound for Asia, particularly China, India, Japan, and South Korea.

The collapse in traffic since the conflict began on February 28 has already removed roughly one-fifth of global oil supply from normal seaborne circulation, creating what traders describe as the largest supply disruption in modern oil-market history. That has fed directly into the roughly 50% surge in crude prices seen during the conflict.

The ceasefire was meant to begin easing that pressure. Instead, the shipping data suggest the waterway remains under de facto Iranian control. On Thursday, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps issued a revised maritime routing directive, instructing vessels to use a northern passage near Larak Island and remain within Iranian territorial waters to avoid suspected mine risks in the usual traffic lanes.

Tehran is effectively asserting operational control over transit through the strait without formally declaring a closure by redirecting vessels through Iranian-monitored waters. This allows it to retain leverage while staying within the framework of the temporary truce.

But the route around Larak Island has now become central to the ceasefire’s practical implementation. Some vessels have already begun taking the unusual corridor, according to tracking data.

British maritime security firm Ambrey warned that vessels not explicitly authorized by Iran, especially those linked to the United States or Israel, remain vulnerable.

In one of the most telling assessments of the current environment, the company said: “Even shipping with apparent approval has been turned back in recent weeks mid-transit.”

That line captures why traffic has not normalized. The issue is no longer simply whether ships are legally permitted to pass. It is whether shipowners, charterers, insurers, and crews believe the risk-adjusted economics justify moving.

War-risk premiums have surged, in some cases rising from near-negligible levels to multiple percentage points of hull value. For large crude carriers, that can translate into millions of dollars per voyage.

This is where reports of possible Iranian tolls add an additional challenge. Multiple media outlets and shipping monitors have reported that Tehran may be considering charging as much as $2 million per ship for passage, though the legality of such fees under international maritime law remains deeply contested.

Western governments have already pushed back strongly. President Donald Trump has warned Tehran against imposing any transit fees, arguing that the waterway must remain open under internationally recognized navigation rights.

Lack of consensus means the implication for oil and shipping markets remains. Even if the ceasefire holds for the full two-week period, the backlog itself will take time to unwind.

Hundreds of tankers and cargo vessels remain stranded inside the Gulf, and maritime analysts say clearing that congestion could take days or weeks even under ideal conditions.

That means supply restoration will lag diplomatic headlines. Thus, crude prices may remain elevated because physical barrels are still not moving at normal volumes. Asian buyers are particularly exposed, given their heavy dependence on Gulf crude. Japan’s decision to announce an additional emergency oil release underscores how seriously governments are treating the continued disruption.

There is concern that if Tehran cannot or will not fully reopen Hormuz during the ceasefire window, Washington and its allies may conclude that Iran is using the truce to consolidate strategic leverage rather than de-escalate.

Conversely, Iran may argue that continued regional military actions, particularly Israeli operations in Lebanon, amount to breaches of the wider understanding, thereby justifying continued control measures.

However, as long as the waterway remains effectively choked, hopes for a durable peace will remain under a cloud, and the two-week ceasefire will continue to look less like a pathway to de-escalation.