Anthropic Claude Mythos — Image by Primakov | Shutterstock

In a dramatic turnaround, Anthropic says the US government has rolled back weeks-long export restrictions that had blocked the AI start-up from exporting its über-powerful Claude Mythos 5 and Fable 5 models over national security concerns.

The US Commerce Department has ended export controls on Anthropic's Claude Mythos 5 and Fable 5 AI models.
Anthropic says it will begin restoring access Wednesday, less than three weeks after the models were suspended over national security concerns.
The reversal comes as Washington weighs AI exploitation risks against keeping US companies competitive in the global AI race.

“We’ve received notice that the Department of Commerce has lifted export controls on Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5, " Anthropic posted on X late Tuesday, adding that it would begin restoring access Wednesday.

The company also wrote that it was grateful for the patience of its Claude users “and to everyone who worked with us on redeploying the models.”

Anthropic announces the US has lifted export controls on its Mythos 5 and Fable 5 AI models.

Anthropic said it was forced to "abruptly disable" the vulnerability-hunting Mythos 5 and its watered-down public-facing counterpart, Fable 5, after receiving the export-control order on June 12.

The move comes less than three weeks after the US Commerce Department ordered the company to suspend access for foreign nationals, citing concerns the advanced AI models could fall into the wrong hands and threaten national security.

Last Friday, Washington partially reversed the order, allowing Anthropic to release its upgraded Mythos 5 model to several "trusted" US organizations.

ai-safeguards-hack — The US continues to tighten oversight of powerful AI models over concerns they could be misused by foreign adversaries. Image by Cybernews

Why Washington fears Mythos

Considered one of the most powerful bug-hunting AI models currently in existence, Mythos has been proven capable of finding software flaws at lightning speed.

This has raised major concerns among security experts, the Trump administration – and Anthropic itself – that the cybersecurity model could be used by foreign US adversaries, including China and Russia, to rapidly identify and exploit countless unknown vulnerabilities before defenders can identify and patch them.

In fact, just last week, it was revealed that during testing by US intelligence agencies, the frontier model essentially “broke into almost all of our classified systems, not in weeks, but in hours," according to testimony from Senator Mark Warner before Congress earlier this month.

Anthropic Claude Mythos, Fable — Anthropic's Mythos 5 and Fable 5 AI models were restored after the US rolled back export restrictions. Image by wutianzeri | Shutterstock

The revelation has prompted US lawmakers to propose new legislation that, if passed, would establish AI-related incident reporting rules for the first time.

Access to Mythos and Fable was officially banned across all US federal agencies almost as soon as they were released.

Although Mythos Preview entered limited testing with approved organizations in late February, Anthropic publicly unveiled it under Project Glasswing on April 7th before launching Mythos 5 and then its guardrailed version, Fable 5, in June.

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Project Glasswing – which has now ballooned to more than 200 technology and infrastructure organizations, including Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Cisco – allows those companies permission to test Mythos’ extraordinary vulnerability-detection mechanisms and autonomous security patching against their own systems.

The export reversal also comes just days after Anthropic accused Chinese tech giant Alibaba of attempting to syphon Mythos’ capabilities in what it described as “the largest known AI model distillation campaign.”