Trump admin blocks foreign access to Anthropic’s Fable 5, Mythos 5

US Orders Anthropic to Suspend Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for Foreign Users

The Trump administration on Friday blocked foreign governments, companies, and individuals from accessing Anthropic’s most advanced AI models, escalating a months-long clash between the White House and the AI company over national security.

Commerce Secretary Invokes Export Controls

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick sent a letter to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei on Friday placing the company’s Mythos 5 and Fable 5 models under export restrictions for all destinations outside the United States and for all foreign nationals within the country, according to Axios, which first reported the action. Reuters confirmed the report, citing the Axios account.axios

The directive came just three days after Anthropic launched Fable 5 as the first publicly available version of its Mythos-class models, and follows reports that Mythos was jailbroken by unauthorized users earlier this year. Mythos 5, the same underlying model with cybersecurity safeguards removed, had been restricted to vetted organizations through Anthropic’s Project Glasswing initiative.thehackernews

A Fraught Relationship

The order represents the latest chapter in a turbulent relationship between the Trump administration and Anthropic. In February, President Trump directed all federal agencies to “immediately cease all use” of Anthropic’s technology, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth designated the company a “supply-chain risk to national security”. A federal judge in March temporarily halted those punitive measures, and by April the White House was negotiating with Anthropic for government access to Mythos.everycrsreport

In May, the White House opposed Anthropic’s plan to expand Mythos access to roughly 120 organizations. Meanwhile, the Financial Times reported in June that the National Security Agency was using Mythos for offensive cyber operations with Anthropic engineers embedded inside classified facilities.youtube

Anthropic Pushes Back

Anthropic publicly disputed the action, calling it a misunderstanding and warning that applying such a standard would “essentially halt all new model deployments for all frontier model providers,” according to the Axios report. The company complied by disabling both models for all customers while leaving its other models, including Claude Opus 4.8, unaffected.axios

The administration indicated the lockdown could last weeks, a timeline that would extend well past the June 22 date when Anthropic had planned to move Fable 5 from free subscription access to paid usage credits.techcrunch