Commerce Department Lifts Export Controls on Anthropic's Fable 5 and Mythos 5 After 18-Day Standoff

The U.S. Commerce Department lifted export controls on Anthropic's Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 AI models on the evening of June 30, according to Politico, Reuters, and Semafor. Anthropic confirmed the news in a post on X and said it would begin restoring access to customers on July 1.

The controls had been in place since June 12, when the Trump administration ordered Anthropic to immediately suspend access for "any foreign national, whether inside the US or outside," according to The National News. That included Anthropic's own foreign-national employees.

What Triggered the Freeze

Mythos 5 is Anthropic's most capable AI model, built specifically to find and exploit vulnerabilities in software code. Cisco's head of security, Anthony Grieco, told NPR that his team used the model to scan 1.8 billion lines of code across multiple programming languages in eight weeks. His estimate: the same work would have taken humans and conventional tools more than eight years.

That capability is exactly why the government got nervous. According to Business Insider, the administration told Anthropic it had identified a way to circumvent the safeguards built into Fable 5, the consumer-facing version of Mythos. Anthropic maintained the concern was based on a misunderstanding of a possible Fable 5 "jailbreak." Amazon and other companies had reportedly warned the administration that the models could be exploited for malicious purposes, according to Semafor.

Fable 5 had briefly been the most powerful AI model available to general consumers before the shutdown. Mythos 5 had not been publicly released at all, circulating only in a limited preview to companies including Google, Microsoft, and Cisco.

The Partial Reversal Came First

On June 26, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick sent a letter to Anthropic's chief compute officer Tom Brown allowing the company to release Mythos 5 to more than 100 U.S. institutions, including major companies and government agencies, according to Semafor. Foreign nationals employed by those approved organizations were also cleared. Fable 5 remained frozen.

Talks over Fable continued through the weekend and into the following week, according to Politico. Axios reported that sources had indicated Fable 5 could return as soon as that week.

The Final Terms

In his letter lifting controls on Fable 5, Lutnick said Anthropic would no longer require an export license after agreeing to three things: proactively detect and address security risks in its models, work with the government on protocols for future releases, and report any malicious activity detected within its systems, according to Politico.

Lutnick posted on X that his office "worked closely with Anthropic to analyze and approve Fable 5 to ensure alignment across the US Government and strengthen America's leadership in AI." White House chief of staff Susie Wiles wrote on X that the government and private sector had "worked together in a way we have never seen before."

Axios noted that it remains unclear precisely what technical changes, if any, Anthropic made to satisfy the Commerce Department's original concerns about foreign access.

OpenAI Caught in the Same Current

Anthropic is not alone. OpenAI delayed the full public launch of GPT-5.6 at the U.S. government's request, releasing it only to a small group of vetted partners, according to The Straits Times and Axios. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on X that extensive safety testing "is not a bad idea. I just don't like the idea of the government picking the customers."

A Regulatory Reversal With Real Critics

The episode represents a sharp turn from where the Trump administration started. The 2024 Republican National Convention platform explicitly promised to repeal Biden's AI executive order and support AI development "rooted in free speech and human flourishing," according to The National News.

Dean Ball, a technology expert who helped craft Trump's AI Action Plan, told The National News: "In a matter of weeks US federal AI policy has gone from implausibly libertarian to increasingly draconian and opaque." Criticism of the administration's approach has come from both sides of the aisle, with conservative technology figures among the most vocal.

More than 100 AI executives, cybersecurity experts, and academics signed a letter to Lutnick and Cyber Director Sean Cairncross expressing concern about the nature of the initial decision, according to The National News.

The restrictions also frustrated U.S. allies. European governments had been relying on Anthropic's models to find and patch vulnerabilities in their own networks before adversaries could exploit them, according to Politico. The Semafor report noted that non-U.S. governments and companies were left in the dark throughout the process, with no clear timeline for access.

Separately, Semafor reported that the initial U.S. concern was partly tied to Mythos having been released to partners too closely linked to China, reportedly referring to a South Korean telecommunications provider.

Complicating Factors for Anthropic

The fight with the administration has unfolded against a fraught backdrop for the company. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth formally labeled Anthropic a supply chain risk in March, according to Business Insider. Anthropic sued the administration to overturn that designation, and that suit remains ongoing. The company also confidentially filed a draft S-1 on June 1, the first step toward a potential IPO this year.

What Comes Next

The Trump administration faces an August deadline under a recent executive order to establish standardized benchmarks for evaluating the security risks of new frontier AI models, according to Axios. Until those benchmarks exist, Anthropic and OpenAI are navigating an ad hoc regulatory regime with no clear, predictable rules for future model releases.