Anthropic announced that it has suspended access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models in line with an export control directive from the US government. The company stated that this decision was taken for national security reasons and that all persons of foreign origin were instructed to prevent using the models.

This instruction, which came at 17:21 on Friday, covers all foreign users and company employees both inside and outside the USA. Anthropic suddenly disabled the models for all its customers to ensure compatibility, but emphasized that other models were not affected by this situation.

Government Directive and National Security Concerns

This sudden development occurred just a few days after Anthropic announced the Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models. The company introduced these models as the most advanced options in industry standards, and Fable 5 attracted attention with new security measures that blocked answers in high-risk areas.

The models were developed based on the Claude Mythos Preview, which stood out with its cyber security capabilities in April. Instead of making these models available for general use, the company was planning to share them with a limited group of companies within the scope of a cyber security initiative called Project Glasswing.

Anthropic stated that the government did not make a detailed statement regarding national security concerns and apologized to its customers for the outage. The company argued that the government should have the power to block unsafe distributions, but that the process should be transparent, fair and based on technical facts.

Ongoing Legal Processes and DOD Tension

This incident is not the first tension between Anthropic and the US government; The company had previously had a serious dispute with the Department of Defense (DOD). DOD identified Anthropic as a supply chain risk after negotiations failed.

This labeling comes with a restriction that prohibits defense contractors from using Claude models in military work. Anthropic filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration to reverse this blacklisting decision, and this legal process is still ongoing.

The company states that the current government intervention does not coincide with the transparency principles they previously advocated.

How do you think these kinds of technological restrictions by governments will affect the overall development of the department?