For generations, technology export controls referred to the transfer of source code to other countries. But that no longer works, as the latest Anthropic fight with the US Commerce Department makes clear.
On Friday, Anthropic announced that it had received instructions from Commerce “to suspend all access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 by any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States, including foreign national Anthropic employees. The net effect of this order is that we must abruptly disable Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all our customers to ensure compliance. Access to all other Anthropic models will not be affected.”
Technically, the Commerce letter doesn’t explicitly say that, but lawyers and consultants argue that, when combined with an earlier executive order declaring Anthropic a supply chain risk, that very well might be what it means.
What the Commerce letter says is that Anthropic needs a license to export Fable 5 and Mythos 5 (a “deemed export“), listing four circumstances in which that license would be required: “The sending or taking of the model out of the United States in any manner; The sending or taking of the model from one foreign country to another in any manner; Retransferring the model within a single foreign country; or the release of the model to a ‘foreign person’ in the United States or a foreign country.”
