Telecom operators Bharti Airtel Ltd and Vodafone Idea Ltd are evaluating the risks posed by Anthropic’s Claude Mythos, an AI model that identifies cybersecurity vulnerabilities in operating systems.
“We are talking to suppliers (to understand the vulnerabilities) because we don't do this, the software is owned by them,” Randeep Sekhon, chief technology officer (CTO) at Bharti Airtel, told reporters on the sidelines of an industry event by the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) on Friday.
Sekhon’s comments assume significance as Anthropic has said its latest model, Claude Mythos—currently available to a limited set of companies—can identify cybersecurity vulnerabilities in their digital infrastructure.
This has raised concerns that, if accessed or misused by malicious actors, it could increase the risk of cyberattacks across critical infrastructure sectors such as telecom and banking.
Sekhon, however, emphasized that it was too early to comment on the actual impact on telecom operators.
“These are not systemic risks putting networks in danger. They are typically smaller software bugs that earlier may not have been discovered through routine checks,” Sekhon said, adding that telcos are users of technology and not builders of technology.
On Thursday, Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman chaired a high-level meeting with banks and key stakeholders to assess risks from emerging threats linked to the AI model. The focus was on assessing the possibility of such technologies being misused to weaponize software vulnerabilities.
When asked about the impact of the model on telcos, Vodafone Idea chief executive Abhijit Kishore said that “there is a lot of work happening in the segment. We will come back at the right time on what we are doing. It is too early to say”.
Meanwhile, Anthropic, according to media reports, has limited access to Claude Mythos to a small group of around 40-50 organizations globally under its “Project Glasswing” initiative, primarily for cybersecurity testing and defensive use cases.
The US-Iran war impact
Telcos have also started feeling the impact of the West Asia war, which has driven up the prices of memory chips.
“There are cost pressures in specific areas where servers and memory are used,” Sekhon said, adding that the impact is limited and the same does not affect the entire network stack.
In March, telecom gear maker Nokia said that supply-chain pressures due to the war, with component shortages such as memory chips, are increasing costs for devices, including wireless access equipment and network infrastructure.
“We started seeing the cost creep happening. As soon as the supply shortage starts, the first thing is the cost changes, and that is what is happening right now,” Vibha Mehra, country manager-designate for India at Nokia, told reporters.
To be sure, memory chip prices had been rising even before the war, as manufacturing capacity shifted from consumer electronics to higher-margin AI-driven memory. This, in turn, prompted smartphone makers to raise device prices in the country.
For telecom operators, an increase in equipment costs could lead to higher network expansion expenses. For example, the fixed wireless access (FWA) rollout, the only 5G monetization use case so far, could be impacted in the long run by cost escalations, according to experts.