The Commerce Department dropped export controls on two of Anthropic’s most advanced AI models on June 13, effectively forcing the company to shut them down worldwide.
Anthropic responded by globally disabling its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models to comply with the new restrictions. Every user, domestic or international, lost access while the company scrambled to figure out how to thread the needle between US law and its global customer base.
How we got here
The friction between Anthropic and the Trump administration didn’t start in June. It traces back to February 2026, when disputes over model access and safety protocols first surfaced, tangled up with Department of Defense designations and contract disagreements.
Since then, Anthropic’s leadership has met with White House officials on multiple occasions, most recently in June, trying to find common ground on safety standards.
