Overview
- The Commerce Department issued an export-control directive that required Anthropic to block foreign-person access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5, and the company disabled both models worldwide because it could not reliably enforce nationality checks in real time.
- Reporting and company statements say the action was tied to a reported prompt‑based technique that can bypass Fable 5’s safeguards, a vulnerability Anthropic describes as narrow and already patched while U.S. officials view it as a national security concern.
- The shutdown has produced intense diplomatic pushback from allies at the G7 and a public rebuke from tech leaders who warned that cutting access harms defenders and risks U.S. AI leadership.
- Negotiations between Anthropic and U.S. agencies are ongoing with daily technical reviews to resolve the Commerce directive and define whether a ‘trusted partner’ or licensing regime can restore allied access.
- The dispute deepens an earlier split with the Pentagon, puts Anthropic’s planned IPO under new uncertainty, and accelerates calls in Europe and Asia to build domestic AI capacity so critical tools cannot be turned off by foreign policy decisions.