By Raphael Satter
WASHINGTON, July 22 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has asked diplomats to push back against talk of a "kill switch" in American technology products following the White House's short-lived decision to keep foreigners from America's most advanced AI models, according to a recent cable reviewed by Reuters.
The talking points, which were circulated worldwide, show how U.S. diplomats are trying to deal with international backlash from the Trump administration's efforts to control how and to whom American AI companies release their models.
The State Department declined to comment and the White House did not return a request for comment.
The Trump administration's June 12 move to block non-U.S. residents from Anthropic's most advanced models, Mythos and Fable, on national security grounds prompted the AI company to abruptly suspend access to the models globally. Asian tech executives seized on the disruption to tout their own alternatives and European lawmakers redoubled their calls for digital independence from the United States.
Although the ban was lifted later the same month, the fallout lingers. Combined with Trump's June 2 executive order, which asked AI companies to voluntarily submit their models to 30 days of cybersecurity testing ahead of their release, it signaled a new appetite from the U.S. government to police AI companies' products -- and potentially yank them even from the hands of allies at a moment's notice.
European lawmaker Christophe Grudler said the episode showed that "the U.S. holds a real 'kill-switch' over essential technologies and that they are more than willing to use it." Aura Salla, a member of the European People's Party, the European Parliament's biggest political group, said that the continent "cannot keep building its tech stack on access that can be switched off overnight by a foreign government."
The State Department cable, dated July 16, did not mention Anthropic by name or refer specifically to last month's ban or Trump's executive order, but it provided American diplomats with talking points aimed at countering the arguments that have sprung up in their wake.
"Pausing narrow uses or requiring a 30-day testing window prior to the release of a highly potent new technology is not a 'Kill Switch'," the cable said. "There is no government 'magic button.' This narrative is exaggerated and doesn't capture the nuances of U.S. technology policy."
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Rubio's cable pushed diplomats to fight "so-called 'digital sovereignty'" initiatives, which it defined as efforts to restrict American tech firms' access to foreign markets, subject them to localization requirements, charge them "network usage fees," or force them to follow local rules around issues such as content moderation. Rubio had already instructed American diplomats to oppose similar data sovereignty measures earlier this year, Reuters previously reported.