Trump eases Anthropic AI restrictions after 18-day standoff
The White House let Anthropic restore Mythos 5 to more than 100 trusted U.S. groups, but Fable 5 stayed blocked after an 18-day clash.
The Trump administration let Anthropic restore access to its Mythos 5 model for more than 100 “trusted” U.S. companies and government agencies, ending an 18-day standoff that had shut down the company’s most powerful tools. Fable 5 remained blocked, leaving the more restrictive part of the government order in place.
The reversal came after the Commerce Department ordered Anthropic on June 12 to suspend access to both Fable 5 and Mythos 5 on national-security grounds. Anthropic said that order forced it to disable access for any foreign national, including foreign-national employees, a move that immediately raised alarms inside the company and across the AI industry. The latest decision loosened one part of that restriction, but only for a limited set of domestic users.
The conflict stretched beyond export controls. On February 27, President Donald Trump directed federal agencies to stop using Anthropic’s technology, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth later designated Anthropic a supply-chain risk to national security after the company refused Pentagon demands to weaken its safety guardrails. Anthropic said it would challenge any such designation in court, and the company said the fight had already jeopardized federal contracts and threatened private contracts as well.
That made the June 26 partial reversal more than a one-company reprieve. It showed that Anthropic could win some relief by negotiating with Washington, but it also underscored how quickly federal policy can move against major AI developers. For investors, customers, and competitors in Northern California and Washington, the message was less about one model than about the risk that access, deployment, and procurement can shift with little warning.
The episode has sharpened concerns in Silicon Valley that heavier federal oversight could slow product rollouts and complicate investment decisions just as U.S. AI firms race to commercialize frontier models. Anthropic’s partial victory solved its immediate access problem, but it left unanswered whether the administration will keep asserting tighter control over how advanced AI systems are released, sold, and used across the country.
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