Senior executives at Anthropic, OpenAI and other AI firms are privately running scenario drills to prepare for a potential catastrophic AI incident that could provoke widespread public and political backlash. They say the most likely form would be a cyberattack that disrupts financial services, internet connectivity, power or water — a shock that could disrupt liquidity, market functioning and prompt tougher regulation or political accountability for industry leaders and officials including Anth

2026-10-09

Senior executives at Anthropic, OpenAI and other AI firms are privately running scenario drills to prepare for a potential catastrophic AI incident that could provoke widespread public and political backlash. They say the most likely form would be a cyberattack that disrupts financial services, internet connectivity, power or water — a shock that could disrupt liquidity, market functioning and prompt tougher regulation or political accountability for industry leaders and officials including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and President Trump. OpenAI said it conducts emergency-preparedness exercises to model possible scenarios and does not regard them as predictions.