White House orders Anthropic to block foreign access to its latest AI models
The White House directed Anthropic to immediately restrict foreign nationals' access to the Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models over national security concerns. The company complied but criticized the lack of detailed justification.
On June 12, the White House ordered Anthropic to block access to its two most advanced AI models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, for any foreign nationals, including the company's own employees, citing national security risks.
The directive followed research by Amazon that showed the models could be manipulated to provide information useful for cyberattacks. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy reportedly shared these findings with the White House, prompting swift action. According to a Semafor report, a contributing factor was the fear that China may have already gained access to the Mythos model, posing a serious security threat.
Anthropic stated it is complying with the government's legal order and has revoked access to both models for all users. However, the company disagrees that a narrow potential jailbreak warrants recalling a commercial model deployed to hundreds of millions of people. Anthropic also noted that the government did not provide specific details of its national security concern and that the vulnerabilities found were minor and also present in other models like GPT 5.5.
Fable 5, launched on June 9, was described by Anthropic as the most powerful model it has ever made generally available. Mythos 5 shares the same underlying model but with safeguards lifted in some areas. The incident has reignited debates about U.S. dominance in frontier AI and the risks of over-reliance on American technology.
