What are smart people saying about the sudden ban on use of Anthropic’s new AI model in foreign countries?

• Anthropic said the Trump administration has ordered it to block foreign access to two powerful AI models.

• In response, the company cut off all access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5.

• The technology industry reacted quickly and with surprise.

Anthropic’s announcement that the Trump administration had ordered the company to cut off foreign access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 sent shockwaves across the tech industry, prompting the company to completely cut off access to these AI models.

Here are some reactions on social media to the latest skirmish in hostilities between the White House and Antropics.

Dean W. Ball, Senior Fellow, American Innovation Foundation

“If this is true, it’s just incomprehensible. We have an administration that is willing to do this. should We export advanced AI chips to China, but does China also want to ban the UK (and every other non-American on the planet) from using our best models? I have no words.

“I don’t know if this is a legal thing specifically for humanity or if it’s extreme national security high-handedness. Either way, it’s just a cartoon.”

Peter Girnus, Senior Threat Researcher, Zero Day Initiative

“Two things are true at the same time.

“First, Anthropic spent months marketing Mythos as too dangerous to release. Sam Altman said this was ‘incredible marketing to say we built a bomb.'” We’ve officially agreed that it’s a bomb. If you describe your product as munitions in every press release, the government will eventually take your word for it. They wrote the legal predicate themselves and called it a brand.”

“Second, we’ve done this experiment before. In the ’90s, the government classified encryption as munitions under the ITAR. Activists defeated encryption by printing the PGP source code as a book, because books are protected speech and floppy disks are arms exports. A T-shirt with three lines of RSA Perl was legally munitions. Control broke down because math doesn’t stop at customs.”

“The new problem is the ‘deemed export’ rule. Showing controlled technology to foreigners in the United States is considered exporting it abroad. So Anthropic’s foreign employees are now barred from the models they make. The ammunition is in the building, and the people who made it are not allowed to see it.”

Marc Andreessen, Partner at Andreessen Horowitz

Chris McGuire, Senior Fellow for China and Emerging Technologies, Council on Foreign Relations

“I actually think that targeted export controls on access to models are prudent. However, imposing blanket controls on a single model for all countries without any warning is highly questionable. Imposing similarly broad deemed export controls that also restrict foreign access is completely unreasonable and would clearly result in the model being removed from circulation, as just happened.

“Export controls are an important tool, a very powerful tool. Used correctly, they have the potential to significantly expand America’s lead in AI. Used incorrectly, they could stifle AI development. The Department of Commerce’s export control strategy is completely disjointed and sabotaging.” It is sending powerful AI chips to China without implementing regulations to prevent smuggling from China, creating massive loopholes that allow AI chips to be sent there, and preventing U.S. AI companies from releasing their own models.”

“This must stop. We urgently need a smart export control strategy that applies strong export controls that deny adversaries access to advanced technology while favoring U.S. companies. The Department of Commerce and BIS are consistently doing the opposite. If BIS doesn’t understand how to use its authority and the impact of its actions, it needs to find new talent who can actually implement a competent export control strategy. The current strategy is inconsistent and self-defeating.”

Matthew Pines, CEO of Physical Superintelligence

“This is going to send shockwaves through all the labs and neolabs… U.S. export control laws operate on a strict liability standard… They are very sharp knives…”

Dan Schipper, Every CEO

“My current view on this situation is that they will lift the ban within a few days and as a result, demand for fables will increase.”

“But this kind of thing is very disruptive and distracting for people in the company. The only comparable scenario I can remember is the firing of Sam Altman, which was resolved relatively quickly. I think that disrupted their momentum for a while, even if things got back to normal.”

“I hope we get a good result here!”

Josh Pigford Founder of Bearmetrics

“Anthropic has not profited from any hyperbole over the past six to 12 months. But I also assure you that this has nothing to do with national security.”

Peter Barnett, Researcher, Machine Intelligence Institute

“If it’s true that the USG restricted the export of Fable because another company said it could be jailbroken, we could end up with a situation where AI companies red-team each other’s models before the USG allows them to be deployed.”

Yusuf Mahmoud, Director of AI Policy, America First Institute for Policy Studies

“The U.S. government has just ordered Anthropic to terminate all foreign access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5, both inside and outside the United States.As a reminder, the majority of technical personnel at all Frontier AI laboratories (including Anthropic) are likely to be foreign nationals.”

Jeremy Howard, fast.ai co-founder

“I do not agree with this decision and I do not like it.

“but also…

“Why couldn’t human intelligence see this coming?

“it is of The obvious response to “this is too dangerous for anyone but us to use” is because it relies on a premise that almost no one agrees with (“we are uniquely good”). ”

Ryan Brewer, member of the OpenAI technical staff

“If the U.S. government continues in this direction, we will eventually only have access to frontier information in a small number of buildings in the Bay Area. That’s unfortunate.”

Ketan Ramakrishnan, Professor of Law, Yale University

“The federal government intends to aggressively regulate AI developers. The questions are whether this regulation will be done wisely, whether Congress and public deliberation will have a role, or whether it will simply be an opaque administrative action.”

Yann LeCun, Executive Chairman, AMI Labs

“Dario Amodei’s ridiculous fears about myth/fable (and AI in general) have finally paid off.

“The U.S. government prohibits its use by non-Americans. Including foreign employees residing in the United States

“A man reaps what he sows.”

Peter Harrell, Visiting Scholar, Georgetown Law School

“As an American, I think it’s ridiculous and un-American for the government to tell me that we can’t use advanced AI models because of vague, unstated security threats. We should regulate AI, but we should regulate it based on transparent and fair rules, not at 5 p.m. on a Friday.”

Alan Rosenstein, Research Director, The Lawfare Institute

“This may be the first major AI First Amendment lawsuit.”

Aaron Levy, Box CEO

“This is a major turning point for AI regulation.

Governments are beginning to decide that some models are too powerful for certain uses, and this sets a precedent for a range of possible future regulations.

I am in the camp that this is unnecessary and that we should primarily regulate the use of AI, not the underlying model. But equally, there are many people who actually prefer this result.

In any case, it is unlikely that we will return to a world where governments have far less meaningful involvement in the rate of AI progress. ”

Gary Marcus, AI researcher

“The Commerce Department’s shocking decree this afternoon, which effectively shuts down Anthropic by cutting off access to Mythos 5 and Fable 5 for many of its own employees, is extremely dramatic and appears to be counterproductive to the U.S. AI industry.

But perhaps it will be in China’s favor. Certainly, every Chinese person (and there are many Chinese people) working in a US AI company would consider returning to China’s competition as soon as possible.

And investors will begin to wonder whether U.S. AI companies can thrive in this atmosphere.

If you want an example of AI regulations that can stifle innovation, this is it. ”

Timnit Gebru, Founder of the Distributed AI Institute

“Lol Anthropic touted their model as ‘dangerous’ because they thought the only outcome would be hype and something to stop China from doing anything.”

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