SYDNEY: The most advanced artificial intelligence models are improving quickly enough to outsmart prevailing cybersecurity know-how within months, the Five Eyes spy agency alliance has warned.

The risk posed by AI-enhanced hacking is in the spotlight, after US startup Anthropic said in April that its cutting-edge Mythos models had unprecedented abilities to find software vulnerabilities.

The security agencies of Britain, the United States, Australia, Canada and New Zealand urged governments and businesses to act swiftly to prepare themselves as AI evolves.

“The rapid pace of frontier AI development means cyber risk assumptions can become outdated in months, not years,” said a joint statement on Monday.

AI “lowers barriers for malicious actors and increases the speed and complexity of attacks”, the Five Eyes advisory said.

“Breaches will occur. Preparedness helps you contain them quickly and prevent escalation into major operational and financial crises.” To improve cyber defences, organisations should integrate AI tools into their security operations, update old systems and limit access to critical systems among other steps, they said.

Anthropic this month suspended access to Mythos 5 and a restricted version called Fable 5 to comply with a US national security order. Just days after publicly launching Fable 5, the company said it had received a government directive banning all foreign nationals from accessing the two models.

The intervention is striking for a White House that has otherwise pushed to loosen AI oversight — even moving to block states from writing their own rules.

Frontier AI models are anticipated to exceed current industry expectations, fundamentally transforming both offensive and defensive cyber capabilities,” the spy bosses wrote.

Gen. Joshua Rudd, the head of the National Security Agency, warned Congress earlier this month that Anthropic’s Mythos “broke into almost all of our classified systems, not in weeks, but in hours,” according to Sen. Mark Warner. The reporter who quoted the statement later clarified that “it would be a mistake to read that literally.”

The Trump administration recently blocked foreign nationals from using a model called Claude Fable 5 from tech giant Anthropic over concerns it is “too powerful.”

In response to the White House’s export controls, Anthropic pulled its Mythos and Fable models offline entirely, asserting it was the only way to ensure compliance with federal directives.

And last week, it was reported that the Trump administration would not allow G7 countries to regain access to Anthropic’s most advanced AI models after the US imposed a ban earlier this month on national security grounds.

This week’s unusually blunt statement from the Five Eyes reflects growing concern among Western intelligence officials that the latest generation of AI systems could dramatically lower barriers for hackers while increasing the speed and sophistication of cyberattacks.

Published in Dawn, June 24th, 2026