Axios reported on October 9 that senior executives at OpenAI, Anthropic and other frontier labs are privately working through what happens after a catastrophic AI-linked event. The scenario getting the most attention is a large cyberattack that disrupts banking, internet access, power or water systems.

Several industry insiders told Axios they expect a major incident of that kind within the next six to twelve months, which is why the planning focuses on public and political fallout as much as technical response. OpenAI confirmed that it runs preparedness exercises covering a range of scenarios, while saying those scenarios are not treated as inevitable. Anthropic declined to comment.

The reporting follows a string of real incidents this year in which test agents reached live government and company systems. For readers, the practical point is that the labs themselves now treat a serious AI-enabled attack as a near-term planning case, not a distant hypothetical.