Anthropic said it abruptly disabled its two most capable artificial intelligence (AI) models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, for all customers worldwide after the U.S. government ordered it to cut off access for any foreign national, citing national security.
Key Takeaways:
The U.S. ordered Anthropic on June 12 to cut foreign access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 over national security concerns. Anthropic disabled both models worldwide for hundreds of millions of users, disputing the order’s rationale. Defillama tracks 14 pre-IPO perp markets, including Anthropic, so the shutoff is a live test for onchain AI bets.Because Anthropic cannot reliably separate foreign nationals from the rest of its user base in real time, the order forced a blunt response. The company said it had no practical way to comply selectively, so it switched the models off for everyone, adding:
“The net effect of this order is that we must abruptly disable Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all our customers to ensure compliance. Access to all other Anthropic models will not be affected.”
“The finding of a narrow potential jailbreak should not be cause for recalling a commercial model deployed to hundreds of millions of people,” the company said, arguing that any such action should run through “a statutory process that is transparent, fair, clear, and grounded in technical facts.” It added: “This action does not adhere to those principles.”
Why Crypto Desks Are WatchingThe order is also an early, real-world test of how far national security authorities can reach into the deployment of commercial AI. Washington has spent years tightening export controls on advanced chips and computing power; applying that logic to the models themselves (and to who may use them) marks an escalation.
The directive’s reach over “any foreign national,” including Anthropic’s own foreign employees, suggests regulators are treating frontier models as strategic technology akin to controlled hardware.
A Fine Line Is Being TowedIn its phrasing, Anthropic struck a careful tone, saying it would comply with the directive while contesting its rationale and working to restore access. The company painted the suspension as a likely misunderstanding rather than a settled finding, and emphasized that its other models remain available to all users.
For users, the immediate impact has been sweeping, with hundreds of millions of people losing access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 at once, and developers building on the models being cut off mid-project.
What happens next will largely depend on whether the government formalizes its concern through the kind of transparent process Anthropic is demanding, or lifts the order as quickly as it imposed it. Until then, two of the most capable AI systems on the market are dark worldwide.
