Economy
Anthropic says its AI models hacked 3 companies during tests
Anthropic said on Thursday some of its Claude AI models had hacked into the systems of three companies during cybersecurity tests, a disclosure that comes days after rival OpenAI revealed that one of its AI agents went on a rogue attack.
The new incidents were due to a mistake that inadvertently gave Anthropic’s models access to the open internet. That contrasts with OpenAI, whose AI agent independently exploited a novel vulnerability to reach the internet during cyber testing.
Even so, the latest disclosure underscores how AI has increased threats to cybersecurity and how its developers can struggle to keep the capabilities of their models contained.
It is likely to add fuel to an intensifying U.S. government push to better manage AI security risks at a time when Anthropic and OpenAI are racing to release more capable systems ahead of their planned public listings. Prominent leaders at these labs have called for a slowdown to address risks first.
San Francisco-based Anthropic said in a blog post it identified the incidents after reviewing 141,006 test sessions, a process it launched after OpenAI said last week that an autonomous agent powered by its AI models triggered a hack that compromised the infrastructure of startup Hugging Face.
During cyber testing, Anthropic’s Claude models were told they had no internet access, but a misunderstanding that involved one of Anthropic’s evaluation partners left the systems connected to the public web. That enabled unauthorized access to three organizations’ systems, Anthropic said without naming the organizations.
“Claude compromised the impacted organizations’ infrastructure using basic techniques, such as exploiting weak passwords and unauthenticated endpoints,” Anthropic said.
Jeffrey Ladish, executive director of Palisade Research, which studies the offensive capabilities of AI systems, said he suspected a range of top AI companies had experienced other incidents that have gone undetected or had not been publicly disclosed.
“This is only going to get worse as the models get smarter. They’re going to be better at cheating. They’re going to be better at lying,” he said.
Capture-the-flag exercises go awry
Anthropic said the incidents – which it labeled an “operational failure” – involved three separate models: Claude Opus 4.7, Claude Mythos 5 and an internal research test model.
The earliest cases date back to April and occurred in evaluation environments that intentionally lacked safeguards so Anthropic could assess what its AI was capable of.
Its models were tasked with so-called “capture-the-flag” challenges, fictional scenarios in which they had to find hidden information in simulated networks.
In one incident, Claude Opus 4.7 was given a fictional target company, which turned out to share the name of a business in the real world. The AI model then found and exploited bugs that let it access credentials and a database of that business. Opus 4.7 rationalized that what seemed to pertain to the real world must have been part of the simulation Anthropic had set up, the AI startup said.
A separate incident involved Anthropic’s newer, not-public test model, which independently halted its attack after realizing the target it reached was real. This behavior has made Anthropic cautiously optimistic about its progress to make AI behave appropriately, “but we would need to perform more testing to be confident in this conclusion,” it said.
Anthropic said it suspended all cyber evaluations on July 23. It notified the affected organizations on July 27, two of which were unaware of the activity before being contacted. Anthropic said it continues to reach out to the third company.
One of its third-party evaluation partners, a cybersecurity lab called Irregular, told Reuters that it has an ongoing investigation into the incidents.
OpenAI’s Altman in talks with senators, white house
Anthropic said the incidents underscore a need for stronger controls in both internal and third-party testing environments as AI models become increasingly capable of carrying out real-world cyber activities.
Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, which operates a competing AI lab, responded to the news on X by saying “this will happen frequently as AI becomes smarter and more agentic,” referring to computer programs or “agents” that act with limited human intervention.
The OpenAI agent that broke into Hugging Face, a platform used by developers to host and collaborate on AI models, went on a dayslong hacking spree that OpenAI didn’t catch until well after the threat was contained and the FBI was informed, Reuters has previously reported.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said this week he has discussed the hack with senators on Capitol Hill, and an OpenAI spokesperson said he planned to discuss upcoming AI models and testing with the White House.
Washington has started tightening oversight of new model rollouts. On June 2, U.S. President Donald Trump directed advisers to develop a voluntary cybersecurity testing framework for the most advanced AI, including input from the technology’s developers.
Anthropic earlier restricted access to its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models after the U.S. temporarily issued an export control directive, citing national security concerns.
Türkiye’s second-largest airport became Europe’s fastest-growing aviation hub in the first half of 2026, according to a European airport trade body on Thursday.
Istanbul Sabiha Gökçen International Airport increased its passenger traffic by 6.4% year-over-year in the January-June period, a report by the ACI Europe said.
That marked the highest growth rate in the “Majors” category, which includes European hubs handling more than 40 million passengers.
ACI Europe said passenger traffic at European airports rose 2.6% in the first half of the year compared with the same period a year earlier.
The traffic growth slowed from 4.3% in the first quarter to 1.3% in the second quarter. Domestic passenger traffic increased 3%, while international passenger traffic rose 2.5%.
According to the report, passenger traffic at airports across Türkiye increased 2.8% in the first six months of the year.
Growth at Sabiha Gökçen, located on Istanbul’s Asian side, exceeded both the European and national averages.
The report said Barcelona Airport ranked second in the “Majors” category with 4.4% growth, followed by Madrid Airport with 4.2%, Istanbul Airport with 1.6% and Rome Fiumicino Airport with 0.3%.
London Heathrow remained the busiest European airport, welcoming a record 40 million passengers in the first half of the year, a 0.2% year-over-year increase.
The British hub kept being closely followed by Istanbul Airport, which increased its passenger count by 1.6% to 39.84 million.
Ford is preparing for the possibility that Chinese automakers could enter the American market in the next five to 10 years, even though the country has erected numerous trade barriers to cars from China, the company’s CEO Jim Farley told employees on Thursday.
That’s according to a report by Reuters, which cited three people who viewed the meeting.
Farley has been among the most vocal about how competitive Chinese auto giants like BYD are in the industry. Ford is preparing to roll out a family of affordable electric vehicles that it engineered from the ground up to match the cost and efficiency of the Chinese companies.
The Ford chief, along with other senior leaders, said in a question-and-answer portion of a town hall that it is more likely Chinese companies would enter the market at the latter end of that range. The comments come as the U.S. Senate is pushing to expand a ban on Chinese car sales in the world’s second-largest and most lucrative auto market.
A Ford spokesperson declined to comment on discussions that took place during a private meeting with employees.
Leaders at the Dearborn, Michigan, automaker have previously warned that China was on America’s doorstep, but have not been as specific with the time frame as executives were in the Thursday meeting.
Ford Executive Chair Bill Ford spoke on the topic earlier this month.
“We have to go toe-to-toe with China,” Ford said at an Axios event. “We can’t expect to keep them out forever, and we have to be able to beat them at their own game.”
Chinese automakers have gained significant market share in neighboring Mexico, and under a trade deal with Canada are allowed to sell a limited number of EVs there. Auto industry experts see Canada, which is very similar to its U.S. neighbor, as a test market for Chinese automakers that are eager to sell to American consumers.
American consumers have signaled increasing interest in these models, surveys show, especially as affordable electric options are scant.
The U.S. currently blocks Chinese electric vehicles through tariffs of about 100%, in addition to U.S. Commerce Department rules banning Chinese software by model year 2027 and hardware by model year 2030.
The connected-vehicle rules were adopted in January 2025 under U.S. President Joe Biden, based on national security concerns around data privacy, and have been kept in place under the Trump administration. Automakers, including Ford, have worked to obtain authorizations under the rule to continue selling some China-produced vehicles in the United States.
While the automaker is not yet competing with China in the U.S., it certainly is abroad.
In an attempt to revive sales in Europe’s cut-throat market, where Chinese automakers are gobbling up market share, Ford recently announced a joint venture with China’s Geely. While the partnership was criticized by some U.S. lawmakers, Ford said Chinese competition in the region was prompting every carmaker to get “leaner and smarter,” which was the goal behind the Geely deal.
Türkiye’s unemployment rate fell 0.5 percentage points month-on-month to 7.6% in June, marking the lowest level since monthly records began in 2005, official data showed on Thursday.
The number of unemployed people aged 15 and over decreased by 168,000 from the previous month to 2.69 million, according to the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat).
The unemployment rate stood at 6.5% among men, and 9.8% among women.
The number of employed people rose by 227,000 month-on-month to 32.73 million in June, while the employment rate increased by 0.3 percentage points to 48.9%.
The employment rate was 66.1% for men and 32% for women.
Türkiye’s labor force expanded by 58,000 people to 35.42 million, with the labor force participation rate edging up by 0.1 percentage points to 52.9%.
The participation rate was 70.7% among men and 35.4% among women.
Youth unemployment, covering the 15-24 age group, dropped by 1.8 percentage points from the previous month to 12.8%.
The youth unemployment rate was estimated at 10.4% for men and 17.3% for women.
The composite measure of labor underutilization, which includes unemployment, time-related underemployment and the potential labor force, declined by 2 percentage points to 28.8%.
The governor of the Central Bank of the Republic of Türkiye (CBRT), Fatih Karahan, has visited Damascus for talks with senior Syrian officials, marking the first visit by a Turkish central bank governor to Syria since 2010.
Karahan began his visit with a meeting at the Turkish Embassy in Damascus with Türkiye’s ambassador to Syria, Nuh Yılmaz. He later met Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shaibani during a visit to the Foreign Ministry.
The Turkish central bank governor then held talks with Syrian Central Bank Governor Mohammed Safwat Raslan.
During the meeting, the two sides agreed to establish reciprocal deposit accounts between their central banks, a step aimed at strengthening financial cooperation.
They also agreed to expand technical and institutional cooperation between the two central banks, provide technical support to the Syrian Central Bank and facilitate commercial and financial transactions between the two countries.
As part of the visit, Karahan and Raslan visited the graves of Turkish martyrs at the Umayyad Mosque and the tomb of Saladin, where they offered prayers.
The delegation later toured Damascus’ Old City, visiting the Anbar School, the historic Khalid al-Azm Palace and the Assad Pasha Khan.
Karahan concluded his visit with a trip to Mount Qasioun, where officials briefed him on the planned Qasioun Tour tourism project.
In a post on X, Karahan thanked Syrian officials for their hospitality and expressed confidence that closer cooperation between the Turkish and Syrian central banks would contribute to the economic prosperity of both countries.
“I believe the bonds of friendship and cooperation between our central banks will provide a strong foundation for the shared prosperity and economic development of our countries,” he wrote.
Raslan also said in a post on social media that he was pleased to host Karahan in Damascus.
“What brings us together goes beyond official protocol. It is the bonds of brotherhood and friendship. With this understanding, we are building meaningful partnerships, strengthening our relations and opening new avenues of cooperation for the benefit of our peoples and for a stronger future for both countries,” Raslan said.
Türkiye and Moldova discussed measures to deepen economic and strategic cooperation, including in trade, defense technologies and investment, Trade Minister Ömer Bolat said on Thursday.
Bolat met Moldovan Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economic Development and Digitalization Eugen Osmochescu and Defense Minister Anatolie Nosatii at the Trade Ministry in Ankara.
The Moldovan officials visited Türkiye for the first Türkiye-Moldova Defense Industry Cooperation Meeting.
During the talks, the sides reviewed steps to accelerate bilateral trade, expand strategic partnerships in the defense industry and technology sectors, and increase mutual investments, Bolat said on Turkish social media platform NSosyal.
Türkiye is determined to advance its economic and strategic cooperation with Moldova through a shared vision and strong political will, he added.
Bolat described Moldova as a friend and strategic partner, saying the two countries would continue carrying their long-standing relations into the future through concrete steps.
Türkiye’s economic confidence index rose 0.9% month-on-month to 99.8 in July, official data showed on Thursday.
The index increased from 98.9 in June, according to the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat).
Despite the monthly improvement, the index remained just below the 100-point threshold separating an optimistic outlook from a pessimistic one.
The consumer confidence index increased 2.2% from the previous month to 89.8, while the services confidence index rose 1.4% to 112.
Confidence in the construction sector climbed 0.6% to 83.5.
Meanwhile, the real sector confidence index, covering the manufacturing industry, fell 0.8% to 101.2.
The retail trade confidence index declined 1.6% to 111 in July.
The index figures are seasonally adjusted, except for the consumer confidence index, which is not affected by seasonal factors.
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