alt Hacker NewsPeople are giving all kinds of explanations here why Goldman is doing this, but they are not addressing what the article (implicitly) says: operating coding agents on the primary machines of finance professionals runs directly into the lethal trifecta. It's as simple as that.
You cannot have semi-unattended agents running on the same workstations that have access to client/trade/prop information and email client, and internet, and internal networks, it's too dangerous--a major leak is just one small mistake or prompt injection away. Banks are not stupid, they are getting it and shutting it down.
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This level of reaction only comes when someone steps in shit. So, there likely was some large leak or “mistake” that has the potential to get out and this is part of either covering up or reducing how bad they look.
Maybe they just realized it's a complete waste of money as well. Could be that too
From the article, more than likely they’re curbing local access, but still will provide access via cloud hosted workspaces.
Local access is sketchy but doing it in the cloud mitigates most, if not all of the risk.
It's quite logical actually but they could run claude code in remote sandboxes still.
Who is solving federation and access control at scale? I’ve seen other companies doing this internally but have not seen a standardized product-y approach. This is a huge problem where I work as well.
Part of It is easy to solve. For example, Our developer workstation have no access to the production network. This already solves issues beyond merely giving unattended agents access to production.
Then one can simply move the agents into something akin to cloud codespaces where they have only access to git, if at all.
Any access to data that is still needed can go through an authorised / authorising mcp proxy.
It doesn’t mean your bankers can’t use LLMs at all.
That sort of risk could be controlled. Goldman has control of those desktops and could ensure Claude Code is always sandboxed, or they could offer it through a remotely hosted platform. I’d be very surprised if they were not already doing at least the former.
No, I think the risks they are talking about would include things like financial risk due to bad trades based on misinformation from buggy code that the authors don’t understand. This sort of policy pivot happens after an Incident that had a Financially Material Impact.
They also cited productivity concerns, which is also something I’ve observed: some people waste a lot of their time and other’s time due to using these tools to do work they do not understand.
Banks don't even let humans cross that boundary.
OK so people who work in finance are doing this now? They just let Claude Code run amok on their machines, with all their employee credentials?
I am out of the loop with the industry, but I thought many people were using cloud agents and controlling them through tmux or something. But yeah I guess that also means you don't have access to do much.
every day we read a 'whoopsie my agent did XYZ, no mallace! (sic)'. Currently with relatively low stakes but still surprised how blasé people are.
https://x.com/jakerunzer/status/2117474337682780643
https://x.com/WilliamBaude/status/2118420271333777856?a=tVmJ...
It is as simple as that, except:
1) everyone can run into the lethal trifecta
2) the product cannot, on an architectural level, be fixed to stop it
3) they are helping the maker of the product go to IPO
If banks are not stupid, they'd say "hey, this presents an unacceptable risk to our customers and by extension, to us, maybe this isn't something we should be involved with".
But no.
But... Why?
But they allowed that exact situation for a while now and no one cared. Stupid security but politically safe since Trump would never investigate.
Big corps never pivot throughout the whole corp for a single issue, only when risk in a certain context keeps compounding. The Dem wins compounded risk of legal action; it's not just that the laws are on the books. They were on the books a month ago.
"Yeah that's what I said it's to hedge legal risk."
It's the way you said it; ignoring potentially relevant political context. A lot the rhetoric demonizing politics is intentional to embed a negative reaction causing us to discount it's value
Leaky llm syndrome is like putting in a wormhole to bypass all those cybersecurity investments.
operating coding agents on the primary machines of finance professionals runs directly into the lethal trifecta.
I've professionally interacted with GS for over 30 years. It blows my mind that GS allowed real exposure to "the lethal trifecta" for even a moment in time.
https://simonwillison.net/2025/Jun/16/the-lethal-trifecta/ for anyone wondering.