‘It’s not a jailbreak’ — Research leading to U.S. export restrictions on top Anthropic models was for defense, cybersecurity CEO says

The U.S. Commerce Department imposed export controls on Anthropic's new AI models Fable 5 and Mythos 5, citing national security concerns over a potential jailbreak. Cybersecurity CEO Katie Moussouris, who reviewed the research, said the findings were actually about defensive capabilities, not a jailbreak. Anthropic disabled the models globally, arguing the action was disproportionate and lacked transparency.

Research that caused the Commerce Department to impose strict limits on the use of Anthropic’s new AI models wasn’t geared toward offensive purposes, according to a cybersecurity CEO who saw the findings. Late Friday, the department used national security export controls to bar the company from distributing Fable 5 and Mythos 5 https://fortune.com/2026/06/13/anthropic-disables-fable-mythos-export-controls-national-security-threat/ . The directive applies to people outside the U.S. and foreign nationals in the U.S., including Anthropic’s own non-citizen employees. Due to the directive’s scope, Anthropic said it had no choice but to disable the models for all users. The company said it was told that research on a “jailbreak” of Anthropic’s AI that sought to probe bypassing of safeguards sparked the export controls. “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 a blog post https://www.anthropic.com/news/fable-mythos-access . “If this standard was applied across the industry, we believe it would essentially halt all new model deployments for all frontier model providers.” While the company reaffirmed the government’s ability to block unsafe AI, it argued that should be part of a statutory process that’s transparent fair, and based on technical facts. “This action does not adhere to those principles.” Katie Moussouris, CEO of cybersecurity firm Luta Security, told the Wall Street Journal https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/anthropic-halts-access-to-top-ai-models-after-u-s-ban-on-foreign-use-a4bca2cc?mod=hp lead pos5 that Anthropic showed her a copy of the findings, which were produced by Amazon https://fortune.com/company/amazon-com/ researchers using prompts to obtain information about security vulnerabilities. “I’ve seen the paper. It’s not a jailbreak. It was Defense Oriented Prompting DOP , capabilities defenders need,” she explained in a post on X https://x.com/k8em0/status/2065807405385183519 on Saturday. Moussouris added, “If Nat defense is the goal, this just scored an own goal against us.” Amazon and the Commerce Department didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Meanwhile, the administration’s directive barring foreign nationals in the U.S. from using Anthropic’s new models raised alarms. Ben Murphy, a scholar at the Institute for Progress think tank, called it “another step on the balkanization of technology.” “It might previously have been unthinkable to require proof-of-citizenship to access services; it’s increasingly common across new technologies and, to be honest, this attempt is not surprising in that light,” he added in a post on X https://x.com/benjaminmmurphy/status/2065611644756181274 . Murphy also highlighted the unpredictability of the administration’s actions and its consequence for AI developers, warning that labs could keep more models in-house or not make them available. In addition, labs might be less inclined toward engaging with the government about potential vulnerabilities, he said, with Anthropic’s stance on being transparent seeming to backfire. Anthropic was already feuding with the administration, which has deemed it a supply-chain risk for Pentagon contractors. Still, the company provided early access to the Mythos model as it warned on its potential cybersecurity implications. “I don’t know that the government wouldn’t have reached that conclusion themselves, but as a business matter, those pronouncements have not produced a healthy working relationship with the government,” Murphy wrote. Subscribe to Fortune Gulf Brief . Every Tuesday, this new newsletter delivers clear-eyed, authoritative intelligence on the deals, decisions, policies, and power shifts shaping one of the world’s most consequential regions, written for the people who need to act on it. Sign up here. https://fortune.com/newsletters/fortune-gulf-brief?&itm source=fortune&itm medium=nl article tout&itm campaign=gulf brief