The US Commerce Department issued a directive on June 12 forcing Anthropic to suspend global access to its two most advanced AI models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, after a jailbreak vulnerability raised national security red flags. The mandate required Anthropic to cut off all foreign nationals from the models, which effectively meant taking them offline entirely.
The models stayed dark for roughly three weeks. Access was restored around June 30 to July 1, but only after Anthropic agreed to implement enhanced safeguards and submit to greater government oversight. Even then, the comeback was uneven: Fable 5 returned to full global access, while Mythos 5 was initially restricted to approved US organizations only.
A company worth nearly $1 trillion, grounded by regulators
This is a company valued at close to $1 trillion, one of the most prominent AI labs on the planet, built on a brand identity centered around safety. And it still got its models yanked offline by regulators.
Just two days before the Commerce Department dropped its directive, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay on June 10 arguing for stricter federal regulation of frontier AI. He called for rigorous testing and auditing frameworks to prevent unsafe deployments.
