Trump Administration Lifts Export Controls on Anthropic's Claude Models

Key takeaway

• The Trump administration lifted export controls on Anthropic's Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 AI models after the company agreed to add a security guardrail that blocks access to certain restricted capabilities and routes those requests to a less-advanced model.

• The guardrail extends an existing protection to requests related to a specific behavior identified in an Amazon paper that researchers had found users could exploit.

• However, Anthropic still faces a separate supply chain risk designation from the Defense Department with no clear path to removal.

3 Key Points

FAQ

What does the new security guardrail do?

When users try to access restricted capabilities related to cybersecurity and biology, they are notified their request is blocked and it is processed by the less-advanced Opus 4.8 AI model instead. The safeguard extends to requests related to a specific behavior identified in an Amazon paper, addressing a workaround where users could bypass restrictions by asking the model to fix code rather than identify security issues.

Is Anthropic's regulatory situation fully resolved?

No. While the Commerce Department lifted export controls on Fable 5 and Mythos 5, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has told advisers there is no clear path to lift his February 28 order designating Anthropic a supply chain risk.