The US government just did something it has never done before: it ordered a commercial AI company to pull its models offline based on who might be using them.
On June 12, the Commerce Department issued an export control directive against Anthropic, forcing the company to suspend access to its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models for all foreign nationals. That includes non-US employees working inside the United States. Anthropic’s response was to disable both models globally, for everyone, because it couldn’t guarantee nationality-based restrictions would hold.
What actually happened
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick communicated the directive in a letter sent at approximately 5:21 p.m. ET on June 12. The stated reason: a narrow jailbreak vulnerability in Mythos 5 that could theoretically compromise advanced cybersecurity capabilities baked into the model.
Fable 5 had been publicly available for less than a week. Fable is built on top of Mythos, so both got swept up in the directive. Other Anthropic models, including earlier versions, remain available and unaffected.
