White House directs Anthropic to halt exports of Fable and Mythos AI models after reported safeguard bypass

The White House ordered Anthropic on or about June 13 2026 to restrict export of its AI models Fable and Mythos to anyone outside the United States and to foreign nationals inside the United States, citing unspecified national security concerns. Anthropic removed both models from availability within roughly 90 minutes of receiving the Commerce Department directive.

The models have remained unavailable to any user for one week as of June 18 2026.

Anthropic launched Mythos in April 2026. Prior to the restriction, access to Mythos was limited to approximately 150 vetted companies and government organizations. The company granted access to Mythos to a South Korean telecom company through its limited partner program.

U.S. officials identified the recipient as a company suspected of having ties to China. SK Telecom has publicly denied any connection to China. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy alerted the Trump administration that Amazon researchers had found a way around Fable 5’s safeguards.

Anthropic stated that the reported bypass of Fable 5 was a narrow, already-patched issue rather than a wholesale defeat of the model’s safety measures. The Commerce Department issued the export-control directive to Anthropic regarding Fable and Mythos.

U.S. Government can use export controls to contain frontier AI the way it has tried, with very uneven results, to contain encryption and spyware before it. U.S. Customs Service opened a criminal investigation against Phil Zimmermann for alleged violation of arms export controls related to PGP software.

Phil Zimmermann published the PGP source code as a printed book during the investigation. U.S. In the early 2010s several governments agreed to expand the Wassenaar Arrangement to cover surveillance and hacking software.