WASHINGTON, June 13 (Nationwide Times) — Anthropic said it would disable access to its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 artificial intelligence models for all users after a U.S. government directive tied to national-security concerns and foreign-national access, according to the company’s public statement as described by the BBC.
The immediate product change is clear: users would lose access to the two named models. The record behind the government action is less complete. The full text of the government directive, the Commerce Department letter described in reporting, and technical documentation on the alleged security issue have not been made public in the materials reviewed for this article.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick sent Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei a letter on June 13 stating that Fable 5 and Mythos 5 were subject to export limits. The Journal, citing the letter and an administration official, reported that the action barred use by clients outside the United States and by foreign nationals inside the United States.
Anthropic’s response, as described by the BBC, was broader than the reported restriction itself: the company said it would disable the models for all clients to comply. That means the suspension affects domestic users as well, even though the government action was described as aimed at foreign access.
Anthropic said U.S. national-security officials had not identified a specific problem with the models, according to the BBC’s account of the company statement. The company said its understanding was that the government believed a method existed to bypass, or “jailbreak,” Fable 5. Anthropic also said it reviewed a demonstration of that alleged method and found only a limited number of previously known, minor vulnerabilities, according to the BBC.
No source material reviewed for this article provides independent technical verification of the alleged jailbreak technique. The available record also does not show whether disabling access for all users was technically required or was Anthropic’s chosen method for complying with the government action.
The suspension came days after Fable 5 was publicly launched, according to the BBC, which reported that the model had been in private preview in April for testing and vulnerability review. The source materials reviewed do not include official release notes, model cards or exact public launch records for Fable 5 or Mythos 5.
The June action followed months of conflict between Anthropic and the Trump administration over how the company’s Claude models could be used by the military and federal agencies.
Anthropic said earlier this year that it refused Pentagon demands to remove safety limits for two categories of use: mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons capable of lethal action without human intervention. Those positions were described in company statements and comments by Amodei reported by the BBC, The New York Times and other national outlets.
Defense officials took a different view. NBC News reported that a senior Defense Department official said the military would not allow a company to restrict lawful use of a critical capability in a way that could put warfighters at risk. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also publicly criticized Anthropic and called for unrestricted access to Anthropic models for lawful defense purposes, according to NBC News.
The Pentagon later designated Anthropic a “supply chain risk,” according to Anthropic’s statements and Defense Department comments reported by NBC News and other outlets. Anthropic said that label would bar defense contractors from using its products for defense-related work.
Anthropic said it would challenge the designation in court. The BBC later reported that a judge ruled the Pentagon order could not be enforced while the lawsuit proceeds. The materials reviewed do not identify the court, judge, case caption or docket number.
The dispute also affected civilian federal use of Anthropic products. Reuters reported in March that the State Department, Treasury Department and Department of Health and Human Services were moving away from Anthropic after President Donald Trump’s directive and the Pentagon dispute. Reuters attributed that information to a State Department memo, an email from State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott, a post by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and agency communications.
Reuters reported that the State Department’s internal chatbot, StateChat, would use GPT4.1 from OpenAI during the transition, citing a State Department memo. Reuters also reported that HHS communications named Google Gemini as an alternative for staff.
The record shows a shift from a procurement and military-use dispute to a broader access restriction affecting Anthropic’s newest models. The government’s stated concern, as reflected in the available reporting, involved national security and possible foreign access to advanced AI models. Anthropic’s stated position was that the cited jailbreak concern had not shown a new major weakness in Fable 5.
What remains undocumented in the public materials is the precise legal mechanism used by the Commerce Department, the full scope of the export limits, the technical evidence behind the government’s concern, and the complete court record in Anthropic’s challenge to the earlier Pentagon designation.
