"The US government, citing national security authorities, has issued an export control directive to suspend all access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 by any *foreign national*, whether inside or outside the United States, including *foreign national* Anthropic employees."

This press release is odd - it says that the export control was imposed to stop foreign nationals from using Fable / Mythos, and then goes on to talk about supposed concerns about jailbreaking the model.

But is that really the concern of the US Administration? This looks more to me like they are viewing frontier models as a strategic asset which they want to keep for US-exclusive use. I can see the logic - if frontier models generally accelerate a society's technological development, then a country looking to retain or increase its strategic edge over other countries would try and keep this sort of multiplier for themselves.

I'm guessing Anthropic shut of access for everyone because currently they have no reliable way to know whether a user is or is not a US citizen. In the near future we might be in a situation where you need to prove your US citizenship before Anthropic / Open AI will allow you to use their current frontier model.

The can’t comply even if they wanted to because employees: Most frontier staff is foreign origin.

https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-54695598

And they just had their TAM killed days ahead of IPO.

Based on all I know about Deemed Exports wrt software and current US controls on software Deemed Exports, your read is spot on.

The phrasing of the foreign nationals implies a Deemed Export control, which is already in place for software for stuff like drones or space satcomms.

If it's a Deemed Export control, it's a strategic position and not a knee jerk reaction about cybersecurity threats.

It's a coherent read too; if Fable can solve coding and build biological weapons (X to doubt) - well then terminal guidance and autonomous drone controls should be a piece of cake for it and that software is already under Deemed Export restrictions.

> I'm guessing Anthropic shut of access for everyone because currently they have no reliable way to know whether a user is or is not a US citizen.

They literally say this is why.

Even if they could practically restrict access to US citizens only, I would expect them not to - it would be hard to regain that once lost and they need a global market for growth.

Your defending the US Administration wanting ID verification built into our devices like going through airport security because you think they think it is 'pro-US'?