President Donald Trump’s attempt to prohibit foreign nations from using the latest iterations of the U.S. firm Anthropic’s artificial intelligence models has drawn a sharp reaction from across the tech space, with many considering the ban unworkable and others warning the measure will impede the country’s efforts to compete with China in the AI race.
On Friday, the California-based company revealed that an “export control directive” had been issued for its Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models, preventing their use “by any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States, including foreign national Anthropic employees.”
Though limited details were provided by the government, Anthropic said it believed the directive was due to a potential vulnerability, specifically a method of “jailbreaking” Fable 5. Jailbreaking refers to bypassing software restrictions—such as an AI’s safety guardrails—that are designed to protect a system or network.
The company said it had investigated the issue and found it exposed only a handful of previously known weaknesses that other publicly available models can also discover, whilst acknowledging that watertight jailbreak protection is likely “not currently possible for any model provider.”
As a result of the order, the company said it had to suspend all access to both models in order to comply, apologized to its customers for the “disruption,” and said it believed this stemmed from a “misunderstanding” on the part of the government.
Newsweek has contacted Anthropic and the Commerce Department via email for comment.
Reactions From The Tech Sector
“We disagree that the finding of a narrow potential jailbreak should be cause for recalling a commercial model deployed to hundreds of millions of people,” Anthropic said in the statement posted Friday. “If this standard was applied across the industry, we believe it would essentially halt all new model deployments for all frontier model providers.”
Both in the U.S. and abroad, much of the criticism from leading tech figures has likewise been directed at the U.S. government, while highlighting the difficulty and consequences of imposing export controls on a technology like AI.
Dean Ball, former White House AI adviser
In a series of posts on X, Ball, one of the authors of the Trump administrations “AI Action Plan,” called it “baffling” that the U.S. would attempt to restrict foreign access to Anthropic models.
“An administration whose posture is that we *should* export advanced AI chips to China, which also wants to ban… Britain (and every other non-American on Earth)… from using our best models?” he wrote on Saturday.
“I can’t tell if this is lawfare against Anthropic in particular or extreme national-security hawkery. Regardless, it is simply cartoonish,” he said in a separate post.
Chris McGuire, former State Department adviser
McGuire, senior fellow for China and emerging technologies at the Council on Foreign Relations, said targeted export controls on AI models could be seen as “prudent,” but criticized the attempt at a universal ban as “highly questionable.”
“Imposing equally broad deemed export controls, which also restrict access to foreign nationals, is just absurd—and obviously will result in the model being pulled from distribution, as just happened.”
McGuire, a State Department and National Security Council adviser during Joe Biden’s tenure, likewise questioned why the U.S. would export AI chips to China while imposing controls on “the models that those same chips produce and run.”
Peter Girnus, software threat researcher
Girnus said that the ban was in certain respects Anthropic’s responsibility, as the company has several times marketed its Claude Mythos model as too powerful to release.
“If you describe your product as a munition in every press release, eventually a government takes you at your word,” he wrote on X. “They wrote the legal predicate themselves and called it a brand.”
However, he said that export controls such as this would ultimately struggle to succeed given the nature of the “munition” in question, and because “math does not stop at customs.”
“Anthropic’s own foreign-national employees are now locked out of the model they built,” he added. “The munition is in the building and the people who made it are not allowed to look at it.”
Gary Marcus, scientist
Marcus, known for his work and frequent commentary on AI, called the directive “shocking” and said this would prove “counterproductive for the US AI industry.”
“Perhaps it does China a favor, though,” he posted to X.
“Certainly every Chinese person working in a US AI company (and there are many) will consider returning to the competition in China ASAP. And investors will start to wonder whether American AI companies can thrive in this atmosphere. If you want an example of an AI regulation that can stifle innovation, this is it.”
Vassant Shetty, Indian entrepreneur
Reactions have also come from abroad, with Shetty pointing out that a universal export control on allies and foes alike will create friction between global powers.
“India is the second-largest market globally for both ChatGPT and Anthropic. If they can turn off the access at the press of a button like this, we are absolutely at the mercy of a foreign govt. Geopolitics is getting uglier. Globalisation in the current form is dead. This is a huge wakeup call for India,” he posted to X.
Ciaran Martin, UK cybersecurity official
“It came completely out of the blue,” said Martin, former chief of the UK government’s National Cyber Security Centre, during an interview with Channel 4.
“It’s probably going to prove unsustainable,” he continued. “Because […] whilst it’s framed as an order to stop foreign nationals accessing this powerful new AI model on security grounds, the only way it can practically be done is to withdraw the model completely, because Anthropic have thousands of foreign nationals working for them, and millions of users that it can’t detect whether or not they’re American or not.”
“The U.S. is obsessed with winning the AI race with China,” he added. “This slows it down.”
What Happens Next
Anthropic has repeatedly engaged in stand-offs with the U.S. government, primarily regarding the military applications of its tech and its potential to be used for mass domestic surveillance.
Beyond the current attempt at imposing export controls on Fable, Anthropic is engaged in a legal battle with the Department of Defense, having been placed on a supply chain blacklist earlier this year after refusing to allow the military unrestricted access to its Claude models.
Many in the tech space believe the government will back down or amend its call to block foreign nationals using the company’s models, and Anthropic indicated that it is in the process of appealing the directive.
“As we have stated publicly, we believe 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,” its statement read. “This action does not adhere to those principles.
“We apologize for this disruption to our customers. We believe this is a misunderstanding and are working to restore access as soon as possible.”
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