For about three weeks in June 2026, two of Anthropic’s most advanced AI models simply went dark for most users. The Trump administration had imposed export controls that forced the company to cut off access industry-wide. Now, after negotiations that reached the highest levels of the Commerce Department, those restrictions are fully lifted.
What happened, and how it got resolved
On June 12, 2026, the Trump administration issued export controls targeting Anthropic’s two flagship models, Mythos 5 and Fable 5. The Department of Commerce cited national security concerns, specifically the risk that adversaries could find ways around safeguards protecting sensitive cybersecurity capabilities built into the models.
Anthropic had no real choice but to comply. The company disabled both models broadly, affecting customers across industries who had built workflows around them.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick became the central figure in the negotiations that followed. On June 26, Lutnick authorized a partial restoration, allowing more than 100 trusted U.S. organizations to regain access to Mythos 5, the more powerful of the two models. Fable 5 access followed. By July 1, the administration had fully reversed the export controls on both.
