U.S. Commerce Department Lifts Restrictions on Anthropic AI Models

The U.S. Commerce Department lifted restrictions on Anthropic's Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models on Tuesday, June 30, 2026, reversing an order issued June 12. Anthropic said it will begin restoring access to the models on Wednesday, July 1.

The department sent the reversal via letter from Lutnick. Anthropic released Fable 5 to the public earlier in June. Days later the company disabled the model after the federal government issued export controls requiring it to block access by foreign nationals.

The company said the government's concerns appeared to focus on a potential "jailbreak" technique and described the discovered vulnerabilities as "relatively simple" and replicable with other models. Anthropic stated it disagreed that a narrow potential jailbreak justified recalling a model deployed to hundreds of millions of people.

It added that applying the same standard across the industry would halt all new model deployments for frontier providers.

Mythos 5, initially planned only for select major companies, faced the same controls. Last week the Commerce Department began allowing certain companies and government entities to use Mythos 5 again. The full interruption for both models lasted more than two weeks.

Earlier in June, President Trump signed an executive order creating a voluntary 30-day review process for the most advanced private AI models. White House chief of staff Susie Wiles thanked cooperating companies for work on advanced model access, guardrail testing and security.

Earlier in 2026, Anthropic clashed with the Pentagon over formal guardrails to prevent military use of Claude models for fully autonomous weapons or mass surveillance of Americans.

President Trump then ordered all federal agencies to stop using Anthropic's AI technology. " Anthropic sued, and a federal judge blocked the restrictions, calling them "Orwellian" and an effort to "cripple" the company. The government is appealing that decision.