U.S. Orders Anthropic to Block Foreign Access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 AI Models

The U.S. government ordered Anthropic to suspend access to its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 AI models for foreign nationals, citing national security concerns. Anthropic said it received the directive on Friday evening and will “abruptly disable” the models for all users to ensure compliance. Access to the company’s other models will remain unchanged.

The company stated it was not given specific details of the national security concern. It added that officials believe a narrow jailbreak could allow Fable 5 to identify software vulnerabilities. Anthropic said it disagrees that the reported jailbreak justifies recalling a model already deployed to hundreds of millions of users.

The company described the evidence as “verbal” and called the action a misunderstanding.

The order follows earlier friction between Anthropic and the government. The company had refused to allow U.S. military use of its models for domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons systems. In response, officials placed Anthropic on a supply-chain blacklist scheduled to take effect later this year.

The new directive marks the first time U.S. export controls have targeted foreign access to AI models themselves rather than chips or tools. " — Anthropic statement, June 13, 2026 (The Guardian) Anthropic said it is working with the government to restore access as soon as possible.

A U.S. official confirmed the commerce department issued the export-control directive.

Anthropic had released Fable 5 earlier this week as a guarded version of its Mythos-class model. The company had previously warned that Mythos-class systems could accelerate sophisticated cyber-attacks if misused. The directive arrives as Anthropic confidentially filed for a U.S. IPO last month and as the White House advances a voluntary framework for secure government access to frontier models before wider release.