AITrump Administration Veers from the Rule of Law in Singling Out Anthropic’s Latest Models
Transparency, fairness, clarity, and evidence-driven enforcement should be core components of AI governance. So long as AI policy decisions are driven by a few actors taking action behind closed doors in response to non-public reports, we will be far short of that standard.
With July 4th looming, it’s tragically poetic that the country is again facing the question of how to constrain the exercise of arbitrary power. The Trump administration’s decision — based on questionable justifications — to block foreign nationals from using two Anthropic models indicates that AI governance is being shaped by actors who wield incredible influence over this critical domain and are yet subject to few effective constraints. This episode strengthens the case for Congress to step up and pass an AI governance framework that will reduce the frequency with which AI policy is breaking news.
What Happened
A brief review of the known facts (of which there are not many—itself a troubling sign from a rule of law perspective) surfaces the many ways in which highly consequential AI policy decisions seem disconnected from a reasoned, transparent, and thorough process. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick sent Anthropic a letter on Friday detailing that their latest models—Fable 5 and Mythos—are now subject to export restrictions.
Mythos drew popular attention following documented instances of its being able to detect and exploit cyber vulnerabilities. Anthropic decided to share that model with a select set of trusted partners rather than risk bad actors leveraging the technology for nefarious ends. Fable 5 is a version of Mythos with several additional safeguards and was therefore made popularly available. In fact, Anthropic reports that Fable 5’s safeguards are “substantially more effective than those of any previously deployed model.”
The administration’s imposition of an export restriction followed from evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak of Fable 5. Amazon researchers probing the model determined that it could provide users with information about cyber vulnerabilities when directed at websites. Yet, as Katie Moussouris, chief executive with the cybersecurity firm Luta Security, told the Wall Street Journal, such information is far more valuable to defenders of Internet systems than attackers.
Nevertheless, the administration’s directive means that Anthropic can no longer make those models available to foreign nationals, theoretically including their own employees. Anthropic responded by blocking everyone’s access to Fable 5 and Mythos to ensure it does not violate the administration’s expansive directive.
