The cybersecurity trade has been quite the stomach-churner in recent weeks, thanks in part to the rise of Anthropic’s Claude Mythos. It’s the AI model so powerful and dangerous that the firm is keeping it exclusive to a handful of trusted tech firms, which hopefully can help the good guys gain a massive upper hand on the bad guys as the stakes involved with AI-powered cyber threats grow.
Undoubtedly, I think Anthropic is smart to contain the impressive model, at least in the earlier days, given its disruptive potential. Dismiss the Claude Mythos headlines if you will (it certainly sounds like great marketing to have an AI model that’s just too powerful to launch), but given Anthropic’s safety-first approach, as well as the number of zero-day vulnerabilities it’s found (especially in old software), I’d argue moving further down the road towards closed-source is a far better idea.
I think Anthropic’s launch model may very well be the one to replicate as firms across the board look to proceed forward with a technology that’s becoming powerful enough that the risks are palpable. Indeed, it’s easy to dismiss the pundits with the warnings as doomers, but I’d argue it’s best to err on the side of caution to prevent a catastrophic scenario with an AI tool that could do profound harm in the wrong hands.
Based on the early data, it certainly feels like Claude Mythos is an innovation that’s best shared among members of Project Glasswing, at least for now. In any case, such safety-driven moves, I think, could prevent that dystopian scenario with AI from ever having a chance to happen. When it comes to the cyber companies, though, the big question is whether such profound AI advancements are a good thing for the industry or not.
CrowdStrike in the age of Mythos is a powerful force
On the one hand, there’s a fear that Claude Mythos is disrupting the incumbent players in cyber. At the same time, these incumbents, which include CrowdStrike (NASDAQ:CRWD), have AI innovations of their own. And on the continuous AI cybersecurity battlefield, the good guys need every bit of help they can get. So, in that regard, Anthropic might be more of an ally that helps cybersecurity, as a whole, level up to gain an even bigger upper hand on bad actors who might be able to get their hands on dangerous AI tech.
On any given day, it might feel like the cyber industry is done for at the hands of frontier model makers. On other days, it feels like the industry got a shot in the arm as the firms leverage profoundly powerful new technologies to improve every aspect of their business. Any way you look at it, I’m a fan of the direction Anthropic is headed and the collaborative, safety-driven approach.
Sure, some may criticize Anthropic as it looks to pull ahead in the AI race, but I do think that AI is moving fast enough that it’s important for all bases to be covered before commercializing. Arguably, there may already be more rewards to be had by keeping a model exclusive in the earlier days, especially when it comes to enterprise-focused AI.
So, is CrowdStrike a net winner or loser as AI becomes even better at cyber?
In the medium term, I think it’s a massive winner, as it leverages a tool that allows it to drastically improve its ability to defend and respond.
More data could take CrowdStrike to the next level and allow its own AI, Charlotte, to become magnitudes better. Add the potential to fix threats immediately upon detection via agents, and I think CrowdStrike, as well as the rest of the industry, can provide more value to customers, and, with that, it can command higher prices.
At the same time, though, the big question is what happens if Anthropic, Google, or any other firm at the frontier of AI just decides to make a deep dive into cyber. Could it become the new go-to cyber solution?
In the long haul, it’s hard to tell, but for the time being, CrowdStrike looks like a serious winner as Anthropic and other model makers work together for the sake of safety rather than against one another for market share. In short, I view CrowdStrike as one of many boats that benefit from the rising tide that is AI’s rapid advancement.
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