US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick sent Anthropic a letter requiring a BIS individual license before granting foreign nationals access to its most advanced models. On the night of June 12, 2026, the company immediately suspended all user access to the affected models, Claude Fable 5 and Claude Mythos 5.
June 12, 2026 · US Commerce Dept. × Anthropic
US Puts Anthropic's Top AI Models Under Export Controls — Company Pulls Them Worldwide
A letter to CEO Dario Amodei demanded a license before any foreign national could access Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5. Unable to block only foreigners in real time, Anthropic disabled both models for everyone, everywhere — the same day.
2
models disabled globally — Fable 5 & Mythos 5
1st
time the 2018 export law is applied to AI models themselves
3 days
from Fable 5's June 9 public release to the shutdown
80+
security leaders signed a letter urging reversal
What the controls took offline: a frontier-class lead
Benchmark scores — taller stack = higher score. The restricted models top every measure.
How a license demand became a worldwide blackout
1 · Letter
Commerce demands a license before any foreign national accesses the models — including foreigners inside the US ("deemed export").
→
2 · Constraint
Cloud services can't filter only foreign nationals in real time.
→
3 · Shutdown
Both models disabled for all users worldwide the same day. Opus 4.8 unaffected.
The government's case
National security — preventing advanced AI from leaking to the military and intelligence services of "countries of concern" such as China and Russia. A possible Fable 5 jailbreak was flagged, though no specifics were given.
The pushback
Anthropic calls it a "misunderstanding" and says the jailbreak is narrow and non-universal, available in other public models. 80+ security experts demand a "scientific and transparent process." Talks set for Monday.
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