The US government has moved against Anthropic on two fronts: banning its AI models from federal agencies and cutting off foreign users from its most powerful systems.
According to Business Standard, a US export control directive barred foreign nationals from accessing Anthropic's Claude Fable 5 and Mythos models, prompting Anthropic to disable both globally. DQ India reports that President Trump directed every federal agency to immediately stop using Anthropic's models, with a six-month phase-out window granted to the Department of Defense and other agencies.
The trigger, according to The Decoder, was a warning from Amazon CEO Andy Jassy and executives from five other tech companies, who reportedly alerted the Trump administration to security vulnerabilities in Anthropic's Fable model. Within hours, the White House forced the model offline through export controls — a striking turn given that Amazon is one of Anthropic's largest investors.
Underlying the export ban is a separate and still-unresolved standoff between Anthropic and the Pentagon. According to the AP via PBS, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth warned Anthropic to allow the military to use its AI technology as it sees fit. According to Reason Magazine, Anthropic's CEO refused Pentagon demands to strip safety guardrails from its military AI — even as NBC News reports the company had already offered the Pentagon access to its systems for missile defense applications.
The fallout has alarmed allies abroad. According to Politico EU, the episode exposed Europe's deep dependency on US-controlled AI infrastructure — a vulnerability that an NDTV opinion piece called a wake-up call for nations that lack domestically owned AI.
The story matters because it shows that a single government directive can instantly revoke global access to frontier AI tools, turning AI infrastructure into a geopolitical lever.