Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is reportedly planning to lift restrictions on Anthropic’s Mythos and Fable AI models, a reversal that would end one of the most aggressive regulatory interventions the AI industry has ever faced. The move comes after Anthropic mounted a lobbying effort to undo export controls that forced the company to suspend access to its most powerful systems for every user on the planet, including its own employees.
The saga began on June 9, 2026, when Anthropic launched Claude Fable 5 and Claude Mythos 5, its most advanced AI models to date. Three days later, Lutnick’s Commerce Department issued a directive mandating licenses for any foreign access to the models, citing national security risks tied to potential military-intelligence diversion to adversaries like China and Russia.
What happened and why it matters
The directive, issued around June 12-13, represented the first time the US government had applied export control powers this aggressively to AI models. The legal authority came from the 2018 Export Control Reform Act, a law originally designed for things like advanced semiconductors and defense technology, not software you can access through an API.
The consequences were immediate and sweeping. The directive threatened both criminal and civil penalties for violations, which left Anthropic with essentially no room to hedge. The company responded by suspending access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all users globally, barring foreign nationals entirely, even those on Anthropic’s own payroll.
