The Trump administration issued an export control directive on June 12, 2026, treating Anthropic’s latest frontier AI models, Claude Fable 5 and Claude Mythos 5, as controlled items under national security authorities.
The restriction is similar to restrictions on advanced semiconductors or military technology. As per the order, Anthropic will require the US government’s permission for any export or re-export of the models outside the United States. It will also need to take permission for Transfer or access by any foreign national (non-US citizens/green card holders), anywhere in the world, including inside the US.
The US government, citing national security authorities, has issued an export control directive to suspend all access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 by any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States, including foreign national Anthropic employees.
— Anthropic (@AnthropicAI) June 13, 2026
The net effect of…
Anthropic has stated that it disagrees with the order and has called it a ‘misunderstanding’, claiming that its frontier AI models are at par with competing AI models, however, it has also underlined that they are fully complying with the US government on the issue.
As of now, Anthropic has disabled both Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all users globally, because screening individual users for nationality is practically not possible. Access was switched to older models like Claude Opus 4.8. This affects US users too.
Fable 5 and Mythos 5 were stated to be Anthropic’s most capable models for advanced reasoning, agentic work, and specialised tasks.
Indian experts react, stress on sovereign AI and tech capabilities
The US government order on Anthropic’s latest frontier models has sparked an intense discussion in India, with many experts reiterating their stress on sovereign AI capabilities.
Popular X user and tech professional @protosphinx used an old statement of Nandan Nilekani where he had claimed that India doesn’t need to lead the world in building the most advanced AI models. But it must lead in ensuring benefits of AI are widely shared.
Sir, they have blocked access to the very AI models you said we should share instead of build https://t.co/ldc4la5HeL pic.twitter.com/BUG9aQydfZ
— sphinx (@protosphinx) June 13, 2026
“Sir, they have blocked access to the very AI models you said we should share instead of build”, @protosphinx posted.
Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu posted, “Technology is the ultimate weapon. National sovereignty, national security, all of it is now about technology.”
Many users raised alarm at how one order from the US Commerce Department can restrict all users globally from using advanced technology, just because the company that has developed the technology is US-based. Indians also highlighted how sovereign capabilities stem from private ownership of research and development and lamented how major Indian companies have shied away from investing heavily in R&D so far.
