Anthropic launched its most ambitious AI models on a Monday. By Thursday, the US government had pulled the plug on global access.
The Commerce Department issued an export control directive on June 12, 2026, ordering Anthropic to immediately suspend access to Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all foreign nationals. That includes Anthropic’s own employees who aren’t US citizens. The directive, signed by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick at 5:21 p.m. ET, came just three days after both models went live on June 9.
Anthropic complied that same evening, disabling both models for all users globally. The company called the whole situation a “misunderstanding.”
What triggered the shutdown
The core dispute centers on a jailbreak. Someone found a way to bypass Fable 5’s safety guardrails, and what that unlocked apparently spooked the government.
