BlockBeats News, June 13th, According to Fortune, Anthropic has closed all access to its latest AI models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, after the U.S. Department of Commerce cited national security export control reasons and prohibited it from providing access to any foreign national. This directive applies not only to individuals outside the U.S., but also includes foreign nationals within the U.S. and non-U.S. citizen employees of Anthropic. Anthropic stated that due to the broad scope of the directive, the company had no choice but to disable access to the relevant models for all users, but lower-capability models like Claude Opus 4.8 remain unaffected.

This policy has sparked strong reactions within the AI industry and among policy experts. Some believe that this is a further punitive measure by the Trump administration against Anthropic. The Trump administration had previously instructed federal agencies to stop using Anthropic models and listed it as a "supply chain risk." AI policy expert Dean Ball said it is unclear whether this is a "legal battle" against Anthropic or an extreme national security hawkish stance, but either way, it's absurd.

Some critics argue that Anthropic is facing the consequences of its own security narrative. Cybersecurity researcher Peter Girnus said that if a company describes its products as military equipment in every press release, the government will eventually treat it as such. He believes that Anthropic set the legal precedent itself and built it into the brand. AI industry critic Gary Marcus believes that the government's actions are illogical and may lead to Chinese-born AI researchers working in labs like Anthropic and OpenAI returning to China, while also causing investors to question whether U.S. AI companies are still a secure bet.

Earlier this month, Anthropic secretly filed for an IPO, with its valuation reaching $965 billion in a recent funding round. The export control decision may dampen investors' enthusiasm for the Anthropic IPO, raising concerns about whether the company can remain at the forefront of AI model development if the government continues to restrict Anthropic models. Some also speculate that individuals concerned about the existential risks of AI may even welcome this decision as it could potentially slow down the pace of AI development.