Anthropic launches Fable 5 and Mythos 5 on June 9, 2026. However, just three days later, on the night of June 12, the US government, citing national security concerns, ordered the company to immediately cut off access to these models to all foreign nationals. The order clarified that the ban also applies to foreign nationals living in the US, including Anthropic’s own foreign employees. Anthropic said that since it cannot distinguish between foreign nationals and non-citizens, it has closed both models to everyone. The company has other cloud models in operation.
Fear of jailbreaking – Anthropic calls it a misunderstanding
The US government cited a company’s claim that it had successfully “jailbroken” the Fable 5. Jailbreaking means extracting information from an AI that it normally refuses to give. For example, if someone asks an AI how to make a bomb, it will generally say no; However, through jailbreaking, an AI can be forced to reveal information it has been programmed to hide.
Possible uses of Fable 5 for cyber and chemical weapons
The US government feared that Fable 5 could be used to conduct cyber attacks or obtain information related to biological and chemical weapons. However, Anthropic refuted this claim. The company said it reviewed the government’s claims and found that the jailbreak was very limited, and did not pose a major threat. In its statement Anthropic said, “We believe this is a misunderstanding, and we are working to restore access as quickly as possible.” This is the first time that the US government has put a live AI model under export control. Earlier such rules were applicable to chips and hardware, but now AI software also comes under this scope. This is being seen as an important turning point in the history of AI regulation.
Impact on India and big question
This is especially important for India as a large number of Indian startups, IT companies and developers rely on Anthropic’s APIs. The work of companies making products based on Fable 5 stopped overnight. The incident also serves as a reminder of how dependent countries like India are on American AI technology and underlines the critical need to build indigenous AI infrastructure.
