• Fable 5, Mythos 5 shut down globally after export control directive
• Foreign nationals barred amid concerns over model access
• US cites possible ‘jailbreak’ bypass targeting vulnerability-finding tools
• Company rejects recall, calls action disproportionate and unprecedented

SAN FRANCISCO: Anthropic announced on Friday it will “abruptly disable” its most advanced artificial intelligence models for all users after the US government ordered the company to suspend access for foreign nationals over national security concerns.

The company said it received an export control directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for foreign nationals without receiving specific details about the national security concerns.

Anthropic said it is its understanding that the government believes there is a method of bypassing, or “jailbreaking,” a safeguard that would prevent Fable 5 from being used in identifying software vulnerabilities.

The order arrives just as a previous dispute between Trump administration officials and the IPO-bound company showed signs of easing.

Anthropic’s relationship with the government ruptured earlier this year when it refused to allow the US military to use its AI models for domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons systems. In response, the government placed the company on a supply chain blacklist set to take effect later this year.

The directive marks a major escalation in US efforts to halt foreign adversaries’ AI capabilities. Historically, US export controls focused on chips powering AI rather than restricting access to the models.

The government provided only “verbal evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak”, Anthropic said. “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,” the company said in a statement.

The official action highlights mounting tension between AI developers and regulators over assessing the risks of jailbreaks. On Wednesday, Anthropic had advocated for greater US oversight of AI, including blocking models with unacceptable risks. However, the company argued Friday’s mandate did not follow principles of fair and fact-based regulation.

The Pentagon’s chief information officer, Kirsten Davies, expressed support for prioritizing national security in a post on X.

“Some things are simply more important than revenue cycles, clickbait, and pre-IPO valuation. America First. Always,” Davies said.

Anthropic confidentially filed for a US IPO last month, edging ahead of rival OpenAI to reach public markets.

Earlier this week, Anthropic launched an AI model named Claude Fable 5, representing a new tier of capability it calls “Mythos-class.” Guardrails bar its use in risky areas such as cybersecurity, which some users complained are “overly broad,” the company said.

Experts warn Mythos models could dramatically accelerate sophisticated cyberattacks, particularly in sectors such as banking that rely on complex and decades-old technology systems.

Anthropic said it collaborated with the US government on safety before the Fable launch and noted that rival models possess a similar ability to unearth minor bugs in code.

“The net effect of this order is that we must abruptly disable Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all our customers to ensure compliance,” Anthropic said. “Access to all other Anthropic models will not be affected.”

Calling the situation a “misunderstanding,” Anthropic said it is working to restore access as soon as possible.

“If this standard was applied across the industry, we believe it would essentially halt all new model deployments for all frontier model providers,” the company said.

Amazon’s cloud unit, AWS, said late Friday that Anthropic asked it to revoke access to the models for “all users in all regions.” A US official confirmed the export control directive suspending access by foreign nationals.

Dean Ball, a former White House official who contributed to the administration’s 2025 AI Action Plan, noted on X that the order suggests all non-Americans, including those based in the US, would be restricted.

“This means you should expect to have to prove your citizenship to use Anthropic models,” Ball said.

Several key Anthropic personnel, including co-founder Chris Olah, AI researcher Andrej Karpathy and philosopher Amanda Askell, were born outside the United States. An Anthropic spokesperson declined to comment on whether those staff members would lose AI model access.

Published in Dawn, June 14th, 2026