The US government issued a directive on June 12 ordering Anthropic to immediately suspend access to its most advanced AI models for all foreign nationals. That includes the company’s own international employees.
The order targets Anthropic’s Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models, which had been publicly rolled out just days earlier. A reported “jailbreak” vulnerability triggered national security alarms, with concerns that the models could be exploited to identify software vulnerabilities. Anthropic complied swiftly, disabling global access to both systems.
Here’s the thing: this is the first time US export controls have been used to compel a major AI lab to shut down its frontier models. Not a fine. Not a warning letter. A full access revocation, delivered at approximately 5:21 p.m. ET on a Thursday.
What happened and why it matters
The directive came from the Trump administration as part of a broader strategy treating advanced AI technologies as national security assets.
