The US government has issued an export control directive requiring Anthropic to suspend access to its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models for all foreign nationals. This order, received at 5:21pm ET, mandates the abrupt disabling of these specific tools for global customers to ensure compliance with national security authorities. Anthropic states that the directive cites concerns regarding a potential method of bypassing model safety protocols. The company notes that the government provided only verbal evidence of a narrow jailbreak technique involving the instruction of the model to read a specific codebase and fix software flaws. Anthropic has reviewed the shared report and validated that the demonstrated capabilities are widely available from other publicly accessible models, including OpenAI’s GPT-5.5. While these two models face immediate suspension, access to all other Anthropic models remains unaffected.
This development highlights the increasing friction between national security interests and the deployment of advanced AI tools globally. The suspension illustrates how regulatory bodies may prioritise perceived risks over technical realities, even when the identified vulnerabilities are minor and solvable by standard models. It also underscores the vulnerability of proprietary systems to external mandates that can disrupt workflows without clear justification. The situation raises questions about the future portability of high-end AI capabilities and the potential for preemptive restrictions based on speculative threats. Stakeholders must now navigate a landscape where access to cutting-edge technology is contingent upon opaque government assessments rather than established technical standards.
* Fable 5 and Mythos 5 access is suspended for all foreign nationals immediately.
* The government cited a narrow jailbreak technique as the reason for the ban.
* Other publicly available models can already perform the tasks flagged as risks.
Stay ahead of AI. Get the most important stories delivered to your inbox — no spam, no noise.
