US asks Anthropic to block global access to top AI models: Why it matters

Published 14 June 2026 · tech

Foreigners are barred from accessing the top AI models, underscoring the US government’s policy of export controls over advanced technology. The administration of US President

Foreigners are barred from accessing the top AI models, underscoring the US government’s policy of export controls over advanced technology. The administration of US President Donald Trump has barred foreigners from accessing the top AI models developed by Anthropic, citing national security concerns, underscoring the US government’s policy of export controls over advanced technology. The United States’ measures come less than a week after Anthropic, the company behind the Claude chatbot, rolled out a new artificial intelligence (AI) model named ⁠Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5. “The US government, citing national security authorities, has issued an export control directive to suspend all access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 by any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States, including foreign national Anthropic employees,” Anthropic said in a blog post on Friday. The latest move has reignited the feud between Anthropic and the Trump administration. The San Francisco-based company is suing the administration after it was put on a supply chain blacklist for its refusal to allow the US military to use its AI models for domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons systems. Will this new US order further rupture ties between the White House and the AI firm? Here’s what we know What’s behind the US order? Anthropic said the US government gave the company an order citing national security concerns, but did not specify further details. According to a June 14 article by US news outlet Semafor, the order was issued partly over suspicions that a China-linked group had accessed Anthopic’s new AI model. China has made big strides in the AI in recent years, with Chinese AI firm DeepSeek releasing generative AI models DeepSeek-V3 and DeepSeek-R1 using a fraction of cost compared to its American counterparts.

Beijing also monopolises rare earth supply chains, which are critical to the AI sector. Semafor noted that David Sacks, an adviser to President Trump, revealed in a post on X how the government found out about security issues with Anthropic’s AI model, which led to the export control order. The government received a warning that Fable 5 could be jailbroken, Sachs said, adding that when Anthopic’s co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei was notified, the company did nothing to fix it. In its blog post on Friday, Anthropic said the US government had given it only “verbal evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak”. “We disagree that the finding of a narrow potential jailbreak should be cause for recalling a commercial model deployed to hundreds of millions of people,” the company said. The Pentagon’s chief information officer, Kirsten Davies, said in a post on X on June 13 that the US Defense Department supported prioritising national security. “Some things are simply more important than revenue cycles, clickbait, and pre-IPO valuation. America First. Always,” Davies said. Al Jazeera, however, could not independently confirm the veracity of the media reports. What are the AI models that will be affected? Anthropic’s Fable 5 model, released earlier this week and based on Mythos technology, is blocked due to the US government order. Experts have told the Reuters news agency that Mythos models, in the wrong hands, could dramatically accelerate sophisticated cyberattacks, particularly in sectors such as banking that rely on complex, interconnected, and often decades-old technology systems. Anthropic said earlier this week that it had worked with the US government, among others, on safety ahead of the Fable launch and that models from rival AI providers showed a similar ability to unearth minor bugs in code.