US Government Orders Anthropic to Disable Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 Worldwide

Anthropic disabled access to Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all users worldwide on June 13, 2026, at 5:12 p.m. ET following a US government directive citing national security concerns. Other Claude models remain available.

The Directive

According to Anthropic, the US government issued an export directive requiring the company to disable access to both models by "any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States, including foreign national Anthropic employees." The result was a complete global shutdown of both models.

According to Axios, the Commerce Department gave Anthropic approximately 90 minutes on Friday to take the models down, with the formal control letter following at 5:30 p.m.

The Alleged Vulnerability

Anthropic stated the government letter "did not provide specific details of its national security concern." The company's understanding is that "the government believes it has become aware of a method of bypassing, or 'jailbreaking' Fable 5."

According to Anthropic, the claimed jailbreak involves telling the model to read a "specific codebase and fix any software flaws." The company saw a demonstration of a "specific technique" used to identify "a small number of previously known, minor vulnerabilities."

Anthropic pushed back, stating the vulnerability level "isn't unique to the two new Claude models but is available from other models," specifically naming OpenAI's GPT-5.5. The company added that the capability is "used every day by the defenders who keep systems safe."

Timeline and Key Players

According to multiple reports:

• The Wall Street Journal reported Amazon took jailbreak findings to the Commerce Department
• Politico reported Amazon CEO Andy Jassy first flagged the problem to the White House
• The Verge reported Amazon's own security research led the White House to the ban
• David Sacks, co-chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, claimed on X that the administration asked Anthropic to fix the jailbreak or pull the model, and that CEO Dario Amodei refused

According to Axios, Anthropic senior technical staff were dispatched to Washington for face-to-face discussions with the White House as of June 15.

Anthropic's Position

Anthropic stated it "disagrees that the finding of a narrow potential jailbreak should be cause for recalling a commercial model deployed to hundreds of millions of people."

The company reiterated its position from the Fable 5 launch: "No testers have yet been able to find a universal jailbreak" and that "perfect jailbreak resistance is not currently possible for any model provider."

Anthropic said it believes "the government should have the ability to block unsafe deployments, as part of a statutory process that is transparent, fair, clear, and grounded in technical facts."

Government Response

US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth stated on X: "Three months ago, @DeptofWar kicked @AnthropicAl out of our building-forever. Every passing day proves why that was the right move."

According to The Information, an unnamed US official said the White House is unlikely to extend the restrictions to any other AI company.

What This Means

This marks the first time the US government has forced a complete global shutdown of commercially deployed AI models on national security grounds. The incident raises questions about government authority over AI deployments, the threshold for security concerns that justify model recalls, and whether similar vulnerabilities exist in competing models. The dispute between Anthropic and the government over what constitutes a sufficient security risk suggests the industry lacks clear standards for when models should be pulled from production.