Amazon security research reportedly led to the White House’s Anthropic Fable ban

Amazon cybersecurity research and CEO Andy Jassy's conversations with the White House triggered an export control directive that forced Anthropic to block foreign nationals from accessing its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 AI models, according to the Wall Street Journal. Anthropic disputes the characterization of the vulnerability as a jailbreak, arguing similar issues exist in other models, while the company's ongoing tensions with the Trump administration over AI ethics may have influenced the decision.

According to the Wall Street Journal https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/amazon-ceos-talks-with-u-s-officials-triggered-crackdown-on-anthropic-models-dcc90578?mod=hp lead pos1 , the export control directive that led to Anthropic cutting off access /ai-artificial-intelligence/949553/anthropic-fable-5-mythos-5-government-national-security to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 was triggered in part by cybersecurity research from Amazon and conversations between CEO Andy Jassy and the White House. According to the report, the paper from Amazon claims that, through a series of prompts, it was able to get Fable 5 /news/946725/anthropic-releases-claude-fable-5-mythos to serve up information that could be used in cyberattacks. Amazon has yet to respond to a request for comment. Shortly after Jassy shared the company’s findings with the government, it made the call to block its use by foreign nationals. Complicating this issue is that many of Anthropic’s researchers are foreign-born, meaning they were barred from accessing their own product. In a statement https://www.anthropic.com/news/fable-mythos-access , Anthropic disputed the government’s characterization of the issue as a “jailbreak.” It argued that many of the same vulnerabilities could be discovered using other publicly available models, including GPT 5.5. Some security researchers appear to back the company’s interpretation. Katie Moussouris, the founder and CEO of LutaSecurity posted on BlueSky https://bsky.app/profile/k8em0.bsky.social/post/3mo6ik3hruk2e that “I’ve seen the paper. It’s not a jailbreak.” Former Commerce Department official Kate Koren https://www.csis.org/people/kate-koren speculated to the WSJ that the White House’s dislike of Anthropic may have influenced the decision. Anthropic and the Trump administration have been at odds /news/885773/anthropic-department-of-defense-dod-pentagon-refusal-terms-hegseth-dario-amodei for some time /ai-artificial-intelligence/883456/anthropic-pentagon-department-of-defense-negotiations over the company’s refusal to allow its AI to be used for mass surveillance of Americans or to power lethal autonomous weapons. In February, Trump instructed federal agencies to stop using /policy/886489/pentagon-anthropic-trump-dod Anthropic’s AI. And just hours later, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth designated the company a supply chain risk /policy/886632/pentagon-designates-anthropic-supply-chain-risk-ai-standoff . The government and the company seemed to have made /ai-artificial-intelligence/913516/now-the-white-house-is-reportedly-preparing-for-access-to-mythos amends /ai-artificial-intelligence/914229/tides-turning-anthropic-trump-administration-cybersecurity-mythos-preview , and the two had worked together to expand access https://www.anthropic.com/news/expanding-project-glasswing to Mythos. However, now the two seem destined to clash again.