The Trump administration is preparing to remove export controls on Anthropic’s Fable 5 AI model as early as tonight, ending a nearly month-long saga that saw one of America’s most prominent AI companies effectively locked out of serving its own users.
How we got here
The story starts on June 9, 2026, when Anthropic launched Fable 5 as what it described as a safer alternative to its more powerful Mythos class of models. Three days later, on June 12, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick issued a directive to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei imposing export controls on both Fable 5 and Mythos 5.
The rationale: national security and cybersecurity risks. The directive required foreign entities, including US employees working abroad, to obtain licenses before accessing either model.
Anthropic’s response was immediate and blunt. The company disabled both models for all users to ensure compliance with the new regulations.
