The US government just did something it has never done before: it used export controls to yank a commercially available AI model off the market. Anthropic, the AI safety company backed by billions in venture capital and a major Amazon investment, found itself on the receiving end.
Senior technical staff from Anthropic traveled to Washington over the weekend of June 14-15 to meet with White House officials. The meetings followed a Commerce Department directive issued on June 12 that effectively forced the company to pull its newest AI models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, from all users worldwide.
What actually happened
The Commerce Department’s export control order landed at 5:21 p.m. ET on June 12, just days after Anthropic had publicly released both models. The directive required the company to restrict access to foreign nationals, citing national security concerns.
Verifying the nationality of every user in real time is not exactly a simple engineering problem. Rather than risk non-compliance while building out such a system, Anthropic chose to disable access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all customers, domestic and international alike.
