Anthropic disables Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models worldwide after abrupt U.S. government export control order

On Friday afternoon, Anthropic received a government order at 5:21 p.m. ET instructing it to immediately suspend all access to its newly launched Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models "by any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States, including foreign national Anthropic employees." Rather than attempt to surgically restrict access, Anthropic disabled the models for all customers to ensure compliance — just days after trumpeting the models as state-of-the-art across industry benchmarks.

Anthropic said the government provided no specific details about its national security concern, and the company pushed back publicly, stating the action did not adhere to principles of transparency, fairness, or technical grounding. The episode is the latest in an ongoing feud with the U.S. government: the Department of Defense previously declared Anthropic a supply chain risk — a designation historically reserved for foreign adversaries — and Anthropic is currently suing the Trump administration to reverse that blacklisting.