US pulls the 'kill-switch' on Anthropic's Fable 5 AI models, sending global allies scrambling — European and Canadian leaders alarm allies over sudden export bans | Tom's Hardware

World leaders have raised concerns over the U.S. administration's recent placement of export controls on Anthropic's frontier AI models, Mythos 5 and Fable 5, over national security concerns, Euronews reports. Suggesting this was a "wake-up call," moment, politicians and prominent figures in the UK, Canada, France, and the Netherlands, among others, said that frontier AI model access was now "critical infrastructure," and something that they desperately needed better control over.

Many of them didn't even point at America directly, merely saying that if governments around the world can block access to the latest AI technologies arbitrarily, then it was within their national security interests to find alternative solutions. That said, that likely means building their own national AI efforts, fragmenting the industry, and reducing reliance and dependence on U.S.-based companies like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic.

Although Reuters reports the heads of U.S. technology firms like Nvidia and Adobe have been in talks with the Trump administration in the hopes that it will reinstate access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5, arguing that the bans hamper cybersecurity defensive efforts, the damage already appears done. The trust that some have had in access to U.S. frontier models is gone.

The Myth, the Fable, the Cautionary Tale

Anthropic debuted its 'game-changing' cybersecurity-focused AI model, Mythos, in April, claiming it was too dangerous to give the world wider access, but it brought in a few select companies and organizations under Project Glasswing to improve their code security. There was a lot of fearful marketing involved, but it was genuinely very good at finding flaws in old codebases. Anthropic suggested similarly capable models would be out in the wild within 18 months, so everyone needed to prepare.

But in early June, it widened access to Mythos to 150 global organizations, and then a few days after that, dropped Fable 5, a Mythos-grade AI model, but with additional safeguards to protect against it being used for nefarious cybersecurity tasks. Despite those would-be protections, the U.S. government quickly swooped in and shut it down, claiming it had been jailbroken and was too dangerous to have in the wild. It placed export controls on the model, and by June 12, it was offline and inaccessible.

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On an individual level, the Claude subreddits have been filling up with programmers crossing their fingers that they'll be given access to Fable 5 again soon, but the more pronounced effect impacts global politics and national security.

Wake Up Call

Shutting down access to Fable and Mythos didn't just mess with programmer workflows. It shut down government and private projects all over the world, most of whom assumed that model access was all but guaranteed. Even if they didn't own the models, the free market would ensure they always had access to the best. But with the U.S. government's export block, that paradigm has shifted.

“The United States is once again demonstrating what we Liberals and Democrats have warned about so many times since Trump entered into office; that the US holds a real ‘kill-switch’ over essential technologies and that they are more than willing to use it," said French Member of European Parliament, Christophe Grudler, in a statement.

The concern over the U.S. government having too great a control of frontier AI model access is also leading to calls for Europe to develop its own alternatives, eschewing the need for American company technologies as much as possible.

”These restrictions are a clear example of the current American ‘nobody but us’ mentality," said Dutch Renew Europe MEP Bart Groothuis. "Once again: this shows that Europe needs its own LLM’s and open weight models or face digital colonization.”

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Not every leader has been so pointed in their criticism of America. Canada's PM, Mark Carney, made it clear in his statement that “Nobody has done anything wrong in the situation," he said via APNews. However, he warned that "We will have done something wrong if we just accept this, don’t take the lesson, don’t build out and diversify."

The UK's former minister for the Armed Forces and Labor MP, Al Carns, suggested this was just another example of why the UK needed to develop its own cutting-edge AI tools, leveraging its deep expertise in the field to ensure UK sovereign access to the most capable technologies.

Some leaders aren't quite set on going it alone, though. France's President Emmanuel Macron championed a joint French and Indian AI effort. Speaking at an event in Nice on Sunday, Macon said:

“Our two countries share the definition of a reliable, open and safe AI, that could be trusted, that could be responsible, that could be ethical," he said, via TribuneIndia.

U.S. companies are scrambling for alternatives, too. Alex Stamos, CSO at Corridor, told The Verge that companies are rushing to sign backup contracts with non-US companies with open weight models so they can continue their projects undeterred, no matter what the Trump administration does next.

In every instance, though, whether leaders pointed fingers or talked up their own efforts, wanted to go it alone or with new partners, the one clear dividing line is that not all of them are looking to move away from America. Alongside a number of other industries impacted by the Trump administration's tariffs and export controls, global partners that once saw the U.S. as the most reliable global partner are increasingly looking elsewhere as that evaporates.

From AI, to Jets, to Search

The U.S. government cutting off access to Anthropic's Frontier models happened quickly, and the consequences of the lost trust are likely to extend for years, or even decades, and affect far more than chips and models.

Citing the recent case of Anthropic model access being pulled, France has announced it is switching from using a U.S. data and analytics firm, Palantir, for a domestic alternative, as Reuters reports. France is also transitioning government departments away from using U.S.-based messaging apps like WhatsApp, with a national alternative, according to Le Monde,

Wired also highlights a number of instances of EU governments and organizations shifting away from U.S. tech firms, including changing default search engines from Google to Qwant, a move towards open-source office software developed in the EU over Microsoft and Google options, and many are ditching Amazon AWS and other U.S. cloud services.

This recent Fable 5 shuttering is likely to only accelerate these efforts, as the reliability of access is called into question once again. But unraveling the EU and the rest of the world from America won't be easy, or even achievable, even in the long term. The global economy is still too integrated for that to be truly viable.

But the desire and impetus are there. For key industries that impact national security - and AI alongside chip fabrication are becoming clear pillars in that space - national alternatives seem all-but-necessary for major militaries and economies. Whether that creates a multi-polar AI world, or just cements the clear headstart and advantage held by countries like the U.S. and China, remains to be seen.