The US Department of Commerce lifted export controls on Anthropic’s Fable 5 and Mythos 5 artificial intelligence models on June 30, ending a two-and-a-half-week standoff that had cut off foreign users, including some of Anthropic’s own employees.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick announced the decision on Tuesday evening, saying the department had worked closely with Anthropic over the prior two weeks to review and approve Fable 5. Anthropic confirmed it received formal notice of the reversal and said it would begin restoring access on July 1.
Lutnick informed Anthropic co-founder and Chief Compute Officer Tom Brown of the decision in a letter dated June 30: Anthropic no longer needs government sign-off to export, reexport, or transfer either model within the US, including to foreign nationals here or abroad.
Commerce first imposed the restriction on June 12, cutting off everyone who wasn’t a US citizen or permanent resident from using either model — including Anthropic’s own foreign staff — regardless of where they were physically located. The directive followed a report from a security researcher at Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN), relayed through chief executive officer Andy Jassy, identifying a jailbreak that could let bad actors route around Fable 5’s safety guardrails.
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Read: Anthropic Suspends Fable 5 Access After US Government Export Control Order
The two sides negotiated in stages. On June 26, Commerce partially restored access, permitting more than 100 vetted US organizations, including major companies and federal agencies, to use Mythos 5, while keeping Fable 5, the version built for general public use, off limits. Tuesday’s letter cleared both models for full release.
Neither Anthropic nor Commerce detailed what changes, if any, Anthropic made to Fable 5’s guardrails to satisfy the review. Policy researchers argue the episode exposes a mismatch between export-control law, built for physical goods crossing borders, and cloud-hosted AI models that reach foreign users without any hardware or code leaving the country.
Also read: Anthropic Accuses Alibaba of Largest Known AI Extraction Campaign, Urges Congress to Act
Tech executives and investors criticized the shutdown for handing extra runway to Chinese open-source developers trying to close the capability gap with US labs while Anthropic’s most advanced offerings sat dark. A prediction market tracking the restoration priced a July 1 return for Fable 5 at 62.5% likely, up sharply from 21% a day earlier.
