US Government Orders Anthropic to Block Foreign Access to Its Most Advanced AI Models
Via The Globe and Mail
Summary
The U.S. government issued an export control directive ordering Anthropic to suspend access to its two most advanced AI models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, for all foreign nationals, citing national security concerns about a potential method of bypassing safeguards that could enable the models to identify software vulnerabilities.
Anthropic complied but publicly disputed the rationale, saying it had received only verbal evidence of a narrow potential jailbreak and that applying this standard across the industry would effectively halt all new frontier model deployments globally.
The order marks a significant escalation in U.S. AI export controls, which have historically targeted chips and hardware rather than restricting direct access to AI models, and arrives amid a broader dispute between Anthropic and the government over its refusal to allow military use of its AI for domestic surveillance and autonomous weapons.
The directive also raises questions about citizenship verification for AI access, with one former White House official noting that users outside the United States would be restricted from Anthropic's latest models, potentially including key company personnel born abroad.
