Silicon Valley executives and global policymakers are troubled by US President Donald Trump’s recent crackdown on Anthropic, the artificial intelligence (AI) company behind the powerful Claude Model.
On June 12, just days after the release of its most powerful upgrades, Claude Fable 5 and the even more powerful Mythos 5, the Trump administration imposed strict export controls on Anthropic’s tools.
The U.S. government cited national security risks from so-called jailbreaks (clever prompts to circumvent AI safety rules), and the San Francisco-based tech giant said it was minor and overstated and also exists on competing AI platforms.
But with the US Department of Commerce effectively banning the use of the model by foreign nationals around the world, including Anthropic’s staff, the company had little choice but to shut down global access altogether.
Washington’s move comes days after Anthropic filed plans to go public, possibly this fall, as it seeks to raise tens of billions of dollars from investors.
US ‘kill switch’ surprises experts and allies
The export ban drew harsh criticism from the technology industry.
In an open letter released on Sunday, a group of more than 170 tech executives warned that while China’s capabilities are rapidly advancing, the regulation deprives cybersecurity defenders of their most powerful tool and “puts America’s AI leadership at risk.”
At this week’s G7 summit in Evian, France, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called for “broad and comprehensive” access to US AI models, while Britain’s request for a carve-out from the ban was rejected.
Meanwhile, some European lawmakers described the US government’s ability to block access as a “kill switch” that would reinforce the need for the European Union to ensure its own AI sovereignty.
“We will not buy the models produced by these companies if they flip the switch overnight,” French President Emmanuel Macron warned on Wednesday.
Haphazard moves expose U.S. regulatory gaps
List Ouk, director of European policy and research at the Future of Life Institute, called the US move “hasty and ill-informed” and called on the US government to put in place clearer and stronger AI regulations, similar to those introduced by the EU in August.
AI safety “cannot depend on the goodwill of a single company in any given week,” Wouk told DW.
The U.S. government has typically deployed legal tactics against foreign rivals such as China and Russia, using export controls and other legal tools.
But targeting U.S. companies like Anthropic would set a dangerous new precedent, technology experts and policymakers say, because it risks undermining investor confidence in the AI boom, stifling innovation and weakening America’s overall technological advantage.
Clemens Fuerst, director of Germany’s ifo Institute, warned in a research note published on Friday that the export ban highlights “vulnerabilities” in Europe’s AI capabilities and called for an expansion of the region’s data centres, chip factories and energy infrastructure.
Fuerst said that despite being a major AI user, Europe controls less than 5% of the world’s AI infrastructure, compared to 75% for the United States and 15% for China.
Humanity has made an enemy in the Pentagon.
Anthropic clashed with the U.S. Department of Defense earlier this year over its refusal to lift long-standing restrictions on mass surveillance of U.S. citizens and AI models for fully autonomous lethal weapons systems.
The Department of Defense has designated Anthropic a “supply chain risk” and threatened to cancel contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and Claude has taken legal action.
Anthropic has built a reputation for being one of the most cautious players in the frontier AI race, taking a safety-first approach that trains its models to be self-critical against a set of stated principles known as Constitutional AI.
Are Antropics being too cautious?
AI researcher Pedro Domingos argues that it is humanity, not the Trump administration, that is guilty of dangerous overreach, and that it presents itself as moral authority.
“They truly believe that AI is a mortal danger,” Domingos, a computer science professor at the University of Washington, told DW. “And they also believe they should run the world.”
“A lot of their problem with the government is that they seem arrogant. [usurp] The government functions themselves are independent,” he added.
But will these controversies hurt Anthropic’s fall listing plans?
Anthropic’s IPO plans face headwinds
Bankers believe the company could raise between $30 billion and $60 billion (26.2 billion to 52.3 billion euros), making it one of the largest IPOs in history. The company was recently valued at nearly $1 trillion and now generates revenue estimated at nearly $47 billion annually.
But being targeted by the White House, facing an export ban on its flagship model and losing a major government contract is likely to weigh on investor sentiment.
Wall Street is hoping that Anthropic, along with a possible listing of ChatGPT owner OpenAI, can replicate the extraordinary enthusiasm that greeted Elon Musk’s SpaceX IPO earlier this month, which raised $75 billion.
IPO expert Jay Ritter said the market believes the conflict will not deter investors because restrictions on foreign access to Anthropic’s top AI models will soon be lifted.
Citing the Calci Forecasting Platform, the University of Florida professor said there is an 85% chance that Anthropic will announce an IPO before Nov. 1, and that “this percentage has changed little over the last week.”
“There is still tremendous enthusiasm for AI companies in both public and private markets,” Ritter told DW.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei told leaders at this week’s G7 summit to prioritize international cooperation on AI regulation over unilateral action and urged them to “resist the temptation to divide” in a scathing rebuke of US repression.
Editor: Tim Rooks
