White House orders Anthropic to block foreign access to Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5, citing export control authorities
Tags AI · National Security · Export Controls
The Trump administration ordered Anthropic to revoke access to its newest AI models for all foreign nationals, including users inside the US and its own employees, forcing the company to take Fable 5 and Mythos 5 offline entirely. The government cited "national security authorities" and export control directives as the legal basis, but has not publicly explained the specific concerns. Anthropic flew to Washington to meet with White House officials but the two sides remain split on the risk the models present. Security experts told WIRED that the administration's demand that Anthropic block all jailbreaks may not be technically possible.
Technical significance
This episode represents the first known use of export control authorities to restrict access to AI models already deployed as cloud services, setting a precedent for how governments may attempt to govern AI after deployment. The legal basis remains unclear — export controls traditionally apply to tangible goods and discrete digital artifacts like model weights, not to API-accessed services. If upheld, this approach could force AI companies to implement geographic access restrictions at the model level, fundamentally altering how foundation models are distributed globally.