Anthropic said on Friday it will “abruptly disable” its most advanced AI models for all users after the US government ordered it to suspend access for foreign nationals, citing national security concerns.
The company said it received an export control directive requiring suspension of access to its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models for all foreign nationals. However, it added that it was not provided detailed information behind the national security assessment.
The directive arrives amid already strained ties between Anthropic and the US government. Earlier this year, the relationship fractured after the company refused to allow US military use of its AI systems for domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. In response, the government placed Anthropic on a supply chain blacklist scheduled to take effect later in the year.
Social media erupts
The decision triggered an immediate wave of reactions online, with users sharply divided and often alarmed.
One X user said, “this is like 9/11 for techbros.”
Another simply wrote “Wtfffff”.
Some users speculated about political and commercial motives. One said, “I can’t help but think this is because Anthropic is in the lead, about to IPO, and the current administration can’t stand them.”
Another wrote, “No killer robots for the Pentagon. US gov: Then no model for anyone. Gold medal in mutual pettiness. Nobody wins.”
Concerns about censorship also surfaced. One X user said, “And the government censorship of AI models begins, just like I warned. Anthropic’s Fable 5 is now essentially outlawed, since even Anthropic cannot guarantee the nationality of user accounts. This is the US government beginning its effort of mass censorship of AI models. Before long, they will ban China-based open source models, too. Mark my words,”
Other users reacted more humorously, with one asking, “Do ants (Anthropic) own staff not get to work on this / not use it personally now lol,”
Ex-Zoho CEO reacts
Former Zoho Corp CEO Sridhar Vembu was among those who reacted strongly to the development, calling the move “big”, Vembu wrote that the disabling of Anthropic’s Mythos and Fable models for users outside the United States demonstrated that “Technology is the ultimate weapon”.
He added that “National sovereignty, national security, all of it is now about technology”, arguing that countries would increasingly view access to advanced AI systems through a strategic and geopolitical lens.
Vembu also said the episode showed that “Globalization is dead and Bharat must find her own way ahead”. Urging policymakers to respond, he said the Indian government should ensure that organisations embrace smaller AI models, including “both Indian and Chinese open source ones”. “With a bit of effort, we can make them work,” he wrote, adding, “Anyway, why pay money to people who don’t even want to sell to you?”
Company cites ‘jailbreak’ concerns
Anthropic said it understood the government’s concern to be linked to a potential method of bypassing safeguards, or what it described as a “jailbreaking” risk, that could allow Fable 5 to be used in identifying software vulnerabilities.
It is Anthropic’s understanding that the government believes there is a method of bypassing, or “jailbreaking,” a safeguard that would prevent Fable 5 from being used in identifying software vulnerabilities”, the company said, reported news agency Reuters.
The company added it had only been given “verbal evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak” and pushed back on the scale of the concern.
“We disagree that the finding of a narrow potential jailbreak should be cause for recalling a commercial model deployed to hundreds of millions of people,” the company said.
The US department of defense chief information officer Kirsten Davies reacted to the development, saying national security considerations must take precedence.
“Some things are simply more important than revenue cycles, clickbait, and pre-IPO valuation. America First. Always,” Reuters quoted Davies as saying.
A US official also confirmed that the commerce department issued the export control directive requiring suspension of access to foreign nationals. Former White House official Dean Ball said the move could effectively restrict usage to US citizens, noting that “non-Americans” may be excluded even within the country, the Reuters report added.
Notably, several prominent figures associated with Anthropic were born outside the United States, including co-founder Chris Olah, AI researcher Andrej Karpathy and philosopher Amanda Askell. HT could not independently verify the citizenship status of the individuals and it remains to be seen whether employees in that category would be affected by the access restrictions.
Company seeks reversal
Anthropic said it believes there has been a misunderstanding and that it is working to restore access to the models as soon as possible.
“If this standard was applied across the industry, we believe it would essentially halt all new model deployments for all frontier model providers,” the company said.
Earlier in the week, Anthropic had launched its Fable 5 model under a new “Mythos-class” capability tier, accompanied by safety guardrails restricting use in high-risk domains such as cybersecurity.
However, experts had warned such advanced systems could still be misused to accelerate sophisticated cyberattacks, particularly against critical sectors like banking systems.
