I'm filming this from a plane because
this is unprecedented. Anthropic just
took Fable 5 offline after a US
government order and they did not want
to wait until it was back on the ground.
The headline version is pretty simple.
The US government just moved to block
foreign access to Anthropic's most
advanced models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5.
The order reportedly covers foreign
governments, foreign companies, foreign
individuals, and even foreign nationals
inside the United States. That last part
is what turns this from a normal export
control story into something much
stranger because if Anthropic has
foreign national employees or
contractors or customers an
infrastructure exposure, the practical
way to comply is really to shut off the
models for everyone. And that is what
Anthropic says it has to do. So the
first point I want to make in the middle
of what is an unprecedented moment is
this. We should not view this as normal
or expected. I think it's very important
that we don't. I think this is the first
real test of what happens when frontier
models are treated less like software
products and more like controlled
national security assets. And I think
there are at least three layers here.
First, obviously the safety layer.
Second, there's a legal fig leaf that's
going on. And third, there's a business
reality, which is why I don't think this
lasts. On the safety layer, I want to be
careful. The public record is still
quite thin. The government has not laid
out a technical finding in public. I'm
sure they will not. Reporting says the
concern may involve a jailbreak pathway
connected to fable and to mythals.
Anthropic appears to be arguing that
this is very narrow, that this is not
universal, and that this does not
justify the shape of the intervention in
any way whatsoever. My read is slightly
different. I actually think anthropic
may be directionally right that a
jailbreak path against one frontier
model is not just about that one model.
If a method works against fable, the
default assumption should probably be
that it will work against any other
advanced system until proven. That does
not mean that every model is equally
favorable. It means the burden ought to
shift. In frontier AI, you don't get to
say this only worked on one model and
then stop. These systems are trained
differently and wrapped differently and
filtered differently and deployed
differently. But they also share enough
structure that a real attack pattern is
evidence about the class of model, not
just the instance. So I am not at all
dismissing the safety concern here. But
I think the stronger critique is
probably about the process. A verbal
report or a vague claim or a narrow
jailbreak pathway is simply not enough
to justify this kind of sweeping order
without a real technical process. And
Anthropic is arguing that. And I think
they're right. If the government is
going to intervene at this level in a
private company's affairs, there needs
to be a transparent statutory path, a
clear technical standard, and some way
for the company to respond to the actual
evidence. Otherwise, this precedent gets
very ugly very fast. Because then any
frontier model can be frozen on the
basis of a claim the public cannot
expect from a process no one can audit
under a standard that no one can apply
consistently. And that's not safety
governance. That's simply the exercise
of discretionary power. The second layer
is the foreign national piece. And this
is where I think the order starts to
look a little bit like a fig leaves. The
phrase foreign nationals sounds narrow.
It sounds like the government is saying
we're not trying to ban the product.
We're just trying to control who has
access to it under existing US law. But
for a modern AI company, that line is
almost impossible to draw polymer
practice. Anthropic doesn't run like a
sealed US-on lab from the 1940s, right?
It sells globally. It employs globally.
It has enterprise customers with global
workforces. It runs through cloud
infrastructure and support systems and
compliance systems, APIs, teams,
vendors, and review processes that are
all at least in part international. So
if the world says no foreign nationals
can touch the model, including inside
the US, that's not a surgical
restriction. It's a shutdown button with
export control language wrapped around
it. And I suspect everybody involved
knows that. Anthropic is going to have
to pull broad access back, which is what
they did, because the operational risk
of accidental non-compliance is
extremely high. You cannot casually
promise that no foreign national
anywhere inside your customer base can
access the model if you are distributing
the model to hundreds of millions of
people. Not on a Friday night, not with
civil and possibly criminal penalties
hanging over you and not for a live
frontier model. So the rule may sound
like a targeted national security
restriction, but in practice it's
effectively a forced pause on the
strongest frontier model we have in the
world right now. And that is why I think
the foreign national language is
effective. It gives the government a way
to say it didn't ban fable for
everybody. But the way anthropic deploys
these systems means not for foreign
nationals is effectively not for
limited. The third piece here is why I
think this probably gets resolved very
quickly. Anthropic and the US government
have had their disagreements in the
past, but they've also shown they can
work together. The Mythos and Project
Glossing story was explicitly about
giving trusted cyber defenders and
infrastructure providers access to
dangerous capability before the writer
public audit in order to shore up the
defenses of the wider internet. That
means the underlying relationship is not
simply that Anthropic refuses and the
government brought story over. It's
actually a template for negotiated
access. There's a story here around
running trusted programs together.
There's already a template for saying
the capability is real, the risk is
real, and the answer is not necessarily
a permanent public break. Even
Anthropic's posture seems to be
temporary. They're saying they're
working to restore access. The company
is not acting like Fable is dead. It's
acting like the access regime broke,
which is certainly true. And that's
probably the right way to understand
this. As frustrating as it is to me
personally, because I love Fable. I've
been using Fable. It's incredible. This
is not really a story though about
whether Fable is good. I'll cover that
another day. Fable, by the way, is
extremely good. I have a full review
coming and I pulled it for now because
the excess story changed right under our
feet as I was getting rid of the road.
But my underlying view of the model
hasn't changed. I think Fable is
probably the best model in the world
right now. And the reason I was excited
about it was not just that it answered
harder questions. It was that it could
carry longer work. It could take messy
source material and build real artifacts
and preserve context and get work to a
reviewable state in a way that felt
meaningfully different, a big step
forward. And that's still true. And the
ban complicates that story. A model this
capable is now no longer just a product
launch. And we probably won't ever view
it that way again after this favored
moment. The model launches from here on
out are going to become deployment
questions. Who can use it? under what
rapper, with what safeguards, with what
audit trail, with what fallback
behavior, and who decides when the risk
is too high. I've been saying and others
have been saying that models are going
to be coming under national security
scrutiny. This is what that looks like.
And that's the real Fable story for me.
A few days ago, as I was looking at
Fable, the question I kept asking myself
was, what work do we get to ask the
model to do now that the model is this
good? How do we expand our imaginations?
Now, my question is, who's going to be
allowed to ask that? I think both
questions matter, but for today, my
advice is pretty simple. Take a breath.
Don't overreact and declare that flavor
was gone. Don't underreact and pretend
that this was nothing and this was just
another policy hiccup. It was much more
than that. It's the first time a
frontier model has been rolled back as a
big deal. I think the right read is
frontier model access is becoming,
whether we like it or not, a policy
surface. If your workflow depends on one
model, one lab, one country's regulatory
mode, and one access contract, you do
not have a stable operating plan, you've
got a dependency. And that doesn't mean
to stop using the best model out there.
It means know what that model is for,
keep your alternatives warm, and don't
build critical work on the assumption
that the frontier tier will always be
available on yesterday's terms. Look, my
guess is that Fable does come back. I
think soon. Look, my guess is that Fable
does come back, and I think it comes
back soon, probably with more process
around trusted access, probably with
more explicit compliance language, maybe
some modified guardrails behind the
scenes, some reporting obligations that
Enthropic has commercial reasons to
figure out so that they can get this
model back online. Customers have real
reasons to want it back, too. And these
are large enterprise customers that have
been using Fable. and the government has
reasons not to look like it just
kneecapped an American frontier AI lab
when the United States has been very
vocal about wanting to lead him. So I do
think this gets resolved but the warning
shot for today matters a lot to all of
us. The next era of AI is not just going
to be about model quality. We have to
stop thinking one-dimensionally. We have
to think about access quality and
governance quality as well. We have to
ask ourselves from now on whether a lab
can ship a model that is powerful enough
to be on the frontier, tightly governed
enough to be allowed by the state and
useful enough for customers to really
benefit from. This is the line table is
sitting on right now and I am really
counting the days until we get this
figured out and we can get favorable
back into everyone's hands. It's a
powerful model and I'm excited to reveal
it with you. I think this model matters.
I think the fight to ensure intelligence
access for all of us matters a lot. If
the future is the intelligence economy,
we all need access to these models. It's
a big big deal and we should be asking
for that access. We should be demanding
that access. It's not I don't think it's
fair or right for only large
corporations to have access to frontier
models like this. I think all of us
deserve it. And I do think despite all
of the hiccups and the headaches today,
despite the fact that Fable 5 is offline
right now, this is a temporary thing. I
think the government and Antropic are
going to get this figured out. and I'm
excited to post that Fable 5 review when
the time comes. In the meantime, keep an
eye on your model dependencies. Make
sure that you understand how to deploy
alternate models for your workflows and
subscribe here for more updates. I will
literally film from the prime to bring
this to you. Cheers. And I hope I don't
have to fill more from the prone today.
We will see.