Anthropic pulled the plug on global access to its two most powerful AI models after the Trump administration issued an export control directive citing national security risks.
On June 12, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick delivered a letter mandating that Anthropic block all foreign nationals from accessing its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models. Rather than try to build a system that selectively filters users by nationality, Anthropic chose the nuclear option: it disabled the models entirely.
The fallout and the scramble
The decision didn’t just affect adversarial nations. It cut off allied governments, European businesses, and research institutions that had integrated Anthropic’s technology into their workflows.
The EU wasted no time raising the issue directly with the Trump administration. French President Emmanuel Macron emerged as the most vocal European leader pushing for a resolution, using the G7 summit in Evian as a platform to advocate for what he called a “trusted partners” framework. The idea is straightforward: create a vetted list of allied nations whose citizens and institutions can access advanced US AI systems without triggering national security alarms.
