On June 7, SK Telecom and Nvidia announced a partnership to build a gigawatt-scale AI cloud in South Korea. The deal positioned the country’s largest wireless carrier as a cornerstone of Seoul’s national AI strategy. Five days later, the White House ordered Anthropic to suspend all foreign access to its most advanced AI models. SK Telecom was also at the center of it.
The Trump administration’s June 12 export control directive forced Anthropic to disable Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all users worldwide. The directive followed two separate incidents that eroded White House confidence in Anthropic. Days earlier, U.S. officials had ordered Anthropic to revoke access to Mythos for SK Telecom, which had joined Project Glasswing in early June. Officials cited the carrier’s alleged ties to China. SK Telecom denied the allegations, stating that the claims lack verified facts. Even after Anthropic complied shortly after, Amazon flagged a guardrail bypass, known as “jailbreak,” in Fable 5 to the White House, prompting the broader export control order.
Within the span of a single week, South Korea’s largest telecom secured a landmark AI infrastructure deal with Nvidia and then lost access to the foundational software it needed to make that infrastructure competitive.
