Anthropic pulled the plug on its two newest AI models just three days after launching them. The reason: a US Commerce Department directive banning foreign nationals from using them, issued under broad national security concerns.
The company determined it couldn’t reliably enforce selective access, meaning it couldn’t just block non-US users while keeping the models live for everyone else. So it shut everything down.
What happened and why it matters
On June 9, Anthropic released Claude Fable 5 to the general public and Claude Mythos 5 to a restricted group of approved users. Three days later, on June 12, the Commerce Department issued a directive suspending access to both models for all foreign nationals.
Anthropic’s response was to disable the models entirely. The company concluded that selectively enforcing the ban, trying to verify the nationality of every user across every platform, was simply impractical.
