The UK has flatly denied that Prime Minister Keir Starmer sought an exemption from sweeping US export controls that effectively killed global access to Anthropic’s most powerful AI models. The denial came just as G7 leaders sat down for lunch with tech CEOs in Evian-les-Bains, France.
The US Commerce Department imposed the controls on or around June 12, targeting Anthropic’s Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models over what officials described as a “non-universal jailbreak risk,” meaning the models’ built-in safety guardrails could potentially be bypassed. Anthropic responded by disabling access to both models entirely, pulling the plug on users worldwide rather than risk non-compliance.
What actually happened with the export controls
The directive, reportedly signed by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, landed at roughly 5:21 p.m. ET and went further than many expected. It suspended access for all foreign nationals globally, a category that includes US-based Anthropic employees who aren’t American citizens.
The move marks a notable invocation of the 2018 Export Control Reform Act, this time targeting AI model access directly rather than the semiconductor hardware that typically falls under such restrictions.
