The US Commerce Department dropped a regulatory bomb on June 12, issuing an export control order that restricts foreign nationals from accessing Anthropic’s most advanced AI models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5. By the next day, Anthropic had disabled those models globally, cutting off users worldwide before the company even had detailed guidance from authorities on how to comply.
The fallout has been swift, particularly in India, where Anthropic had been actively building enterprise partnerships. Now Washington and New Delhi find themselves in tense discussions over how, and whether, Indian firms and developers can regain access to the technology they were just starting to integrate into their operations.
What happened and why it matters
The export control order from Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s department cited national security concerns. Specifically, the government flagged risks around potential jailbreaks of advanced AI systems, where bad actors could manipulate models into bypassing their safety guardrails.
Anthropic’s status as a Pentagon contractor added another layer of sensitivity. The company’s ties to US defense infrastructure made its most capable models a natural target for tighter controls, particularly as those models grew more powerful and more widely deployed abroad.
