US Government Orders Anthropic to Halt Access to New AI Models
Anthropic disabled its latest AI models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, for all customers after receiving a U.S. government export control directive on Friday, citing national security concerns. The order, received at 5:21 pm ET, required the company to suspend access by any foreign national, including its own employees. Anthropic said it had no choice but to take the models offline entirely.
The Directive
The U.S. Commerce Department issued the directive under national security export controls, barring distribution to foreign nationals anywhere. Source: AP News Anthropic called the action a "misunderstanding" and said the government provided no specific details about the security concern. Source: BBC The company said it hopes to restore access "as soon as possible." Source: CNBC
Disagreement Over Threat
Anthropic stated that officials cited a technique to bypass Fable 5's safeguards, but the company argued the jailbreak was narrow and that other publicly available models could achieve similar results. Source: WIRED "We disagree that the finding of a narrow potential jailbreak should be cause for recalling a commercial model deployed to hundreds of millions of people," Anthropic wrote. Source: Fortune The company emphasized that the government should block unsafe deployments through a transparent statutory process, not an opaque directive. Source: CNBC
Broader Context
The move follows ongoing friction between Anthropic and the Trump administration. The Pentagon previously labeled Anthropic a "supply chain risk" after contract disputes, and Anthropic is suing to reverse that designation. Source: Fortune Despite the disruption, access to other Claude models remains unaffected. Source: Fortune
Sources
5 quotes“AI giant Anthropic said Friday it has taken its latest artificial intelligence models, known as Fable 5 and Mythos 5, offline to comply with a directive from the Trump administration to prevent their use by foreign nationals.”
“Anthropic said it enabled pre-release access for a handful of organisations because the tool was so intelligent that it could be dangerous because of its ability to exploit or hack computer systems.”
“Our understanding is that the government believes it has become aware of a method of bypassing, or 'jailbreaking' Fable 5.”
“As we have stated publicly, we believe the government should have the ability to block unsafe deployments, as part of a statutory process that is transparent, fair, clear, and grounded in technical facts. This action does not adhere to those principles.”
“We disagree that the finding of a narrow potential jailbreak should be cause for recalling a commercial model deployed to hundreds of millions of people.”