Anthropic has been forced to shut down access to two of its flagship AI models after the U.S. government issued an emergency directive Thursday citing national security concerns, the company said in a statement posted to its website. Access to all other Anthropic models remains unaffected.
The directive, which Anthropic says it received at 5:21 p.m. ET on June 12, stems from the government’s belief that researchers had discovered a way to bypass Fable 5’s safety protections. Anthropic says it reviewed what it believes to be the technique in question and found that it produced only minor vulnerability findings, all of which are already discoverable using other publicly available AI models, including OpenAI’s GPT-5.5.
Access Shut Down For All Anthropic Users Globally
The company is complying with the order but pushing back hard on the reasoning behind it. “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 wrote in its statement. The company argued that if this standard were applied industry-wide, it would effectively halt new model launches across every frontier AI developer.
The timing is striking. Just two days before receiving the directive, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay arguing that governments should have the power to block dangerous AI deployments. The essay compared frontier AI regulation to the Federal Aviation Administration’s aircraft testing standards. “Their release should be blocked or reversed as a threat to public safety if they do not meet high standards of safety,” Amodei wrote. Technology influencer and Polyweb Founder Sara Tortoli (@sarainwondertech) captured the market’s reaction in an Instagram post Thursday: “When you spend years describing your model as potentially civilization-ending, you should not be surprised when governments start treating your model like weapons.”
Global Restrictions Could Harm IPO
The shutdown doesn’t occur in a vacuum. Anthropic’s relationship with Washington has been turbulent. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth labeled the company a supply chain risk earlier this year, prohibiting the use of Claude inside the Pentagon. Anthropic then sued the Trump administration, challenging both that designation and a directive for civilian agencies to stop using its products. The suit has yet to be fully resolved.
The previous spat between Anthropic and the Trump administration resulted in growth for Anthropic. However, the market implications on this decision could be different. Analysts have noted that companies and governments worldwide now have more incentive to build their own models or turn to Chinese open-source alternatives. This is not a desirable position for U.S. AI companies striving for IPO, unable to guarantee global access.
Anthropic says it believes the situation is “a misunderstanding” and is working to restore access. But whether this episode marks a one-time regulatory overreach or the beginning of a more aggressive government posture toward frontier AI, the industry is watching closely.
