US Government Forces Anthropic to Pull Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 Over National Security Concerns
Tags AI · National Security · Export Controls · Anthropic
The Trump administration compelled Anthropic to withdraw its two most advanced AI models — Claude Fable 5 and Claude Mythos 5 — from distribution citing national security risks. White House officials told WIRED that Anthropic must ensure the models' guardrails cannot be circumvented before they can be rereleased, a condition security experts say is technically impossible to guarantee. The models were pulled after Amazon researchers reportedly jailbroke Fable 5, and the White House separately ordered Anthropic to revoke SK Telecom's access to Mythos over alleged ties to China. Anthropic has not been publicly told exactly what rule it violated, and cybersecurity researchers signed an open letter calling the crackdown dangerous, noting the same jailbreaks exist in other widely available models.
Technical significance
This marks the first time the US government has forced a private AI company to withdraw deployed models, establishing a de facto pre-publication review regime for frontier AI. The precedent means any model capability the administration deems a national security risk — including advanced cybersecurity reasoning — could be restricted regardless of its legitimate defensive applications. Second-order effect: companies will face pressure to underreport capabilities or build in geographic access restrictions from day one.