"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 next interesting question will be - will the US share this capability with her traditional strategic allies (e.g. five-eyes countries), or is it truly America First (or, 'America Alone')?