The Trump administration’s ban on the use of Anthropic’s most advanced AI models—Fable 5 and Mythos 5—has been in effect for five days, with no clear end in sight. During that time, questions about the motives behind the directive have steadily grown. Ostensibly, the government based the ban on national security concerns. Federal officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, reportedly learned from Amazon CEO Andy Jassy last week about research conducted by the company showing that Anthropic’s Fable 5 was able to identify flaws in the company’s cybersecurity software. (Amazon has invested billions in Anthropic over the past three years and also provides some of the graphics processing units powering its family of Claude AI models.) Then, on Friday, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick sent a letter addressed to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, which said the company was required to obtain an official government license before Fable 5 or Mythos 5 could be used by any “foreign persons” inside or outside the U.S., including Anthropic’s own employees. Anthropic was told it had less than ninety minutes to comply, sending the company into a state of confusion and ultimately forcing it to cut off all users’ access to both models.