The U.S. Government Orders Anthropic to Cut Off Foreign Access to Its Best AI — So the Company Shuts It Off for Everyone

A Commerce Department letter required a federal license before any non-American could use Fable 5 or Mythos 5. Unable to tell citizens from non-citizens among hundreds of millions of users, Anthropic disabled both models worldwide.

The Department of Commerce sent Anthropic a letter today placing export controls on its two most capable AI models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5. Under the order, any foreign national — whether abroad or living in the United States — needs an approved federal license to use them.

Anthropic's response was to switch both models off for everybody. "The net effect of this order is that we must abruptly disable Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all our customers to ensure compliance," the company said. The reason is practical rather than defiant: the models serve hundreds of millions of people, and Anthropic has no reliable way to determine, in real time, which of them are American citizens. Faced with a rule it could not selectively apply, it applied it to everyone.

Export controls are an old tool used in a new place. For decades the government has restricted selling advanced technology abroad — missile parts, encryption software, the chip-making equipment currently at the center of U.S.–China policy. Those are physical things, or at least things that ship. This is the first time the tool has been aimed at access to a running AI service, where the "export" is a person in another country typing into a website.

The letter has not been made public. Reporting indicates it cited national security, and that the trigger involved a published security finding about what the models could be talked into doing.

Whatever the merits, something significant happened today: the United States government demonstrated that it can, with a letter, take the most capable AI systems in the world off the market — not by passing a law, and not through any process the public can see. Legal analysts are already arguing about whether the authority stretches this far. The demonstration has been made regardless.