US saw risk of Anthropic models being diverted to foreign military intelligence

WASHINGTON – US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick said he took action against Anthropic’s latest Mythos and Fable AI models because officials feared they could be deployed by military intelligence users in China, Russia or other countries of concern.

Lutnick noted the risk in a letter sent to Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei on June 12, ordering the company to suspend export of the AI models to destinations worldwide and all foreign nationals, wherever located, according to a copy of the letter seen by Reuters on June 15.

Senior Anthropic technical staff met officials at the Department of Commerce in Washington on June 15 to negotiate a solution, a Trump administration official said.

The stakes are high, with the government seeking assurances the models cannot be used to harm the US, while Anthropic is pushing to restore access to its top-tier models after taking them offline for all users on June 12.

Lutnick has been part of the process, holding regular calls with Anthropic officials as he works toward a deal, a source familiar with the situation said. Amodei and Lutnick are both set to attend the G-7 meetings in Evian-les-Bains, France, where they may speak as negotiations continue. National cyber director Sean Cairncross joined June 15’s working-level meeting with Anthropic at the Commerce Department, the source added.

The company’s technical staff have met officials virtually every day since the Trump administration contacted the company on June 12, a person close to the company told Reuters.

After the Lutnick letter, Anthropic said it would disable access to the models globally.

The government told the company it believes there is a method of bypassing, or “jailbreaking”, a safeguard that would prevent Fable 5 from being used in identifying software vulnerabilities, Anthropic said in a blog post on June 12.

The bypass found only “minor” security flaws that other publicly available models can also find, the company added.

Relations between the Trump administration and Anthropic ruptured earlier in 2026 after Anthropic refused to allow the US military to use its AI models for domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons systems, and the government retaliated by putting it on a national security blacklist.

The San Francisco-based AI start-up, which has confidentially filed for a US initial public offering, previously warned about the hacking capabilities of its Mythos model and held it back from wide release.

On June 9, Anthropic rolled out a public version, called Fable 5, which included what it described as cybersecurity safeguards.

Anthropic worked with the government to test Fable 5 before it was released, the person close to the company said, and received its approval to deploy it.

The letter to Anthropic said the Commerce Department was taking action through authorities granted it under the 2018 Export Control Reform Act to impose controls on emerging technologies essential to US national security. It marks the first time the Commerce Department has used that power, according to an export control expert.

The letter said that the Commerce Department would require a licence for the export (or transfer to a foreign national in the US), and threatened that failure to comply with the new restriction would result in “prompt criminal and civil penalties”.

However, export control experts said that AI models are generally not exported. They are deployed through remote access, which the export control regulations do not control, raising questions over whether the department has the legal authority to take such action.

The Commerce Department did not respond to questions about the authorities in question. Neither the department nor Anthropic responded to requests for comment on the June 15 meeting. More than 80 cybersecurity executives and experts on June 14 signed an open letter to Lutnick and Cairncross that supported Anthropic’s position.

In that letter, cybersecurity leaders at major firms, including Nvidia and Adobe, asked the Trump administration to lift the restrictions on Anthropic. REUTERS