US order to block foreign access to Anthropic models unsettles allies
A US government order directing Anthropic to block foreign access to its most advanced models, Mythos 5 and Claude Fable 5, has prompted the company to take both systems offline. The order, issued last week on national-security grounds, applies to all foreign nationals inside and outside the United States. The two models had been slated for an early-June release and were never launched publicly.
Anthropic said the government provided no formal rationale, but the company understood the administration believed it had found a “jailbreaking” method for Fable 5 — a technique to bypass the model’s safety guardrails. Before the order, Anthropic had granted roughly 200 institutions across 15 countries access to a Mythos preview for vulnerability testing, access the restriction now cuts off.
The move drew pointed reactions from US allies. French President Emmanuel Macron called it a “wake-up call” while criticizing the restrictions as “strictly nationalist.” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney warned against “over-reliance” on US systems and urged allies to “build out and diversify.” The episode is likely to accelerate European interest in homegrown alternatives such as France’s Mistral, since a capability that can be withdrawn by Washington at short notice is hard to build national infrastructure around.