Alex Stamos on Why the US Should Lift Its Fable and Mythos Export Ban

The US Department of Commerce ordered Anthropic to suspend access to its AI models Fable 5 and Mythos 5 by foreign nationals, prompting cybersecurity leader Alex Stamos to urge the administration to reverse the export ban in an open letter.

Late on Friday, June 12, Anthropic announced https://www.anthropic.com/news/fable-mythos-access it had received a letter https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-16/read-the-lutnick-letter-that-led-anthropic-to-disable-mythos from the United States Department of Commerce notifying the company that the government had issued an export control directive forcing it to suspend all access to its AI models Fable 5 and Mythos 5 by any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States, including Anthropic's own foreign-national employees. To comply, the company disabled access to both models for all its customers. The Wall Street Journal called https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/anthropic-halts-access-to-top-ai-models-after-u-s-ban-on-foreign-use-a4bca2cc?st=zNHWKH&reflink=article copyURL share the episode one of the most powerful examples yet of US government intervention in the AI race. The White House move has left many experts baffled https://www.techpolicy.press/anthropics-mythos-recall-and-the-white-houses-missing-ai-safety-playbook/ . And, it is raising alarms https://www.euronews.com/2026/06/13/wake-up-call-europe-reacts-to-anthropic-halting-access-to-its-fable-5-and-mythos-5-ai-mode in foreign capitals about the wisdom of relying on American AI, suggesting the US will operate ad hoc, with access to advanced models revoked on a case-by-case basis. Against that backdrop, a group of cybersecurity leaders organized by Alex Stamos has urged the administration to reverse course in an open letter https://freefable.org/ . Currently, Stamos is chief product officer at an AI security startup called Corridor. Previously, he was chief security officer at Facebook, before he left to found the Stanford Internet Observatory. Justin Hendrix caught up with him on Tuesday, June 16.