Inside the whirlwind 24 hours that led the White House to slap export controls on Anthropic

Original Article by Sophia Cai and Cheyenne Haslett

In a rapid 24-hour escalation, the Trump administration imposed export controls on Anthropic's latest artificial intelligence models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, this past Friday. Citing national security concerns, the White House acted after what it described as a frantic effort to convince Anthropic to voluntarily withdraw its recently launched Fable model. In response to the federal directive, Anthropic abruptly disabled access to both models for all customers globally to ensure full compliance with the new regulations.

The administration's heightened concerns emerged just days after Fable's public release, despite Anthropic's prior assurances regarding its safety protocols. A critical turning point occurred on Thursday when Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, whose company is an investor in Anthropic, reportedly alerted the White House to potential bypasses of the model's guardrails. This intelligence, corroborated by the National Security Agency, prompted a high-level White House meeting involving Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, White House Cyber Director Sean Cairncross, and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles to address the perceived security vulnerabilities.

Following the emergency consultations, White House officials initiated a series of tense calls with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. While Amodei defended Fable's safeguards and differentiated the reported bypasses from a broader "universal jailbreak," administration officials, including Bessent and Cairncross, remained unconvinced. Accounts differ on the nature of the standoff: White House officials claimed they "begged" Anthropic to collaborate and remove the model voluntarily, while sources close to Anthropic assert they were given a mere 90-minute deadline to pull the models with insufficient details on the specific threat. The administration, citing Amodei's previous warnings about AI's dangers, expressed bewilderment at his perceived reluctance to address the identified vulnerability.

This unprecedented move underscores the government's real-time struggle to regulate rapidly evolving and potentially hazardous AI technologies. Even David Sacks, former White House AI czar and a vocal opponent of regulation, publicly supported the administration's decision, viewing the "jailbreak" as a serious, albeit resolvable, safety issue. While past ideological clashes between Anthropic and the administration have been noted, including a Pentagon designation of Anthropic as a supply chain risk earlier this year, Sacks clarified that this specific export control action was solely driven by security concerns. The onus is now on Anthropic to remediate the safety issues for a potential lifting of the controls.

Business Insider

Entrepreneurs and innovators should focus on developing robust AI safety frameworks and compliance solutions, as regulatory oversight and national security concerns increasingly shape the AI landscape. Opportunities abound in creating secure deployment strategies and independent auditing services for advanced AI models.

Source: Original Article

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