US Government Orders Anthropic to Suspend Fable 5 and Mythos 5 Access Over Jailbreak Concerns

The US government has issued an export control directive forcing Anthropic to immediately suspend access to its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models for all users, including the company's own foreign national employees.

According to Anthropic's statement, the company received the directive at 5:21pm ET on June 13, 2026. The order requires Anthropic to disable Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all customers to ensure compliance with national security authorities. Access to all other Anthropic models remains unaffected.

Limited Technical Details Provided

The government's directive did not provide specific details of its national security concern beyond claiming awareness of a jailbreak method for Fable 5. According to Anthropic, the government believes someone has discovered a way to bypass the model's safety controls.

Anthropic reviewed a demonstration of the alleged technique, which it describes as "asking the model to read a specific codebase and fix any software flaws." The company identified only "a small number of previously known, minor vulnerabilities" that other publicly-available models can also discover without requiring a bypass.

Anthropic Disputes Severity Assessment

Anthropic states the government has provided only verbal evidence of "a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak." The company claims the capability level demonstrated is "widely available from other models (including OpenAI's GPT-5.5), and is used every day by the defenders who keep systems safe."

The company has committed to sharing more details within 24 hours of the announcement.

Access Status

Despite the directive received at 5:21pm ET, at least one user reported continued access to Fable via claude.ai and Claude Code at 9:01pm ET, suggesting implementation of the suspension may still be in progress.

What This Means

This marks the first known instance of the US government using export control authority to force immediate suspension of a commercial AI model. The action raises questions about the criteria and process for such interventions, particularly when the alleged security concern appears to involve capabilities Anthropic claims are already available in competing models. The lack of technical specificity in the government's directive and the rushed timeline suggest either genuine urgency or potential overreach in AI regulation enforcement. The coming 24 hours should provide clarity on whether the security concern justifies such unprecedented action.