Anthropic disables access to top-tier AI models after US ban on foreign use
Anthropic announced it will abruptly disable access to its most advanced AI models for all users after the US government ordered it to suspend access for foreign nationals, citing national security. The company disagrees with the decision but is complying.
AI firm 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 due to national security concerns. The export control directive targets the Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models, requiring that access be cut off for anyone who is not a US citizen or permanent resident. Anthropic stated it received only "verbal evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak" and argued that such a finding should not warrant recalling a commercial model deployed to hundreds of millions of people.
The order comes amid ongoing tensions between Anthropic and the Trump administration. Earlier this year, the company refused to allow the US military to use its AI for domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons, leading to its placement on a supply chain blacklist set to take effect later in 2025. The current directive marks an escalation in US efforts to restrict foreign adversaries' AI capabilities, moving beyond chip controls to directly limiting access to AI models.
Anthropic recently launched Claude Fable 5, a "Mythos-class" model with built-in guardrails barring use in risky areas like cybersecurity. Experts have warned that such models, if misused, could accelerate sophisticated cyberattacks on critical infrastructure. The company noted that it had cooperated with US government safety reviews before the launch and that rival models show similar abilities to find code bugs.
Amazon's AWS unit said it was asked by Anthropic to revoke access to the models for all users in all regions. A US official confirmed the Commerce Department issued the directive. Former White House official Dean Ball commented on X that the order effectively requires users to prove citizenship to access Anthropic's latest models, which could affect key staff like co-founder Chris Olah, researcher Andrej Karpathy, and philosopher Amanda Askell, who were born abroad. Anthropic declined to comment on whether such employees would lose access.
The company expressed hope to restore access quickly, warning that applying the same standard across the industry would halt all new model deployments for frontier AI providers.
