Anthropic's Government-Ordered Shutdown of Fable 5 and Mythos 5 Fuels Sovereign AI Push Abroad

The Trump administration's order forcing Anthropic to take its two newest AI models offline over the weekend has accelerated calls from governments across Europe, Canada, and beyond to build domestic AI capacity — reinforcing fears that reliance on American technology leaves nations exposed to Washington's policy decisions.

Anthropic complied after the White House demanded it cut off access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all foreign nationals, including the company's own employees outside the United States. The company said it had little choice but to comply with the order, which arrived with little warning or explanation.

Both models were already operating under safeguards limiting their use in what the company described as "high-risk areas." Part of the White House's rationale for the pullback reportedly stems from its belief that a group linked to China had accessed Mythos 5.

The shutdown reverberated immediately across allied governments. In the United Kingdom, AI and online safety minister Kanishka Narayan stopped short of naming Anthropic, Trump, or the United States directly, but used the episode to argue Britain must develop its own AI capacity as a matter of national security. "We treat every other threat to our sovereignty with deadly seriousness, but we haven't learned to treat this one in the same way," he said.

The response in France was more pointed. Former Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, presidential candidate for Emmanuel Macron's Renaissance party, called the shutdown the start of "the AI war" and likened the withdrawal of the models to Iran's blockade of the Strait of Hormuz — framing AI access as a strategic chokepoint. Le Monde reported similar alarm from across France's political spectrum, and members of the European Parliament have cited the episode as evidence that tech sovereignty must be made a reality quickly.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney struck a more measured but equally pointed tone. "The situation we're in collectively right now with Mythos and Fable is something that can happen with overreliance on certain models," Carney said. "Nobody has done anything wrong in the situation. But we will have done something wrong if we just accept this, don't take the lesson, don't build out and diversify."

The incident lands against a backdrop of years of European anxiety over dependence on American technology, spanning chips, cloud computing, and AI. That unease has deepened under Trump, amid trade disputes and threats of withdrawing from NATO commitments.

Not every country is starting from zero. China has long championed domestic AI firms, and its frontier models represent one of the few credible alternatives to American labs — though in some areas Chinese models still lag their US counterparts. Anthropic has separately accused Chinese rivals of using its models to train competitors on an "industrial" scale. Smaller sovereign efforts like France's Mistral and Canada's Cohere have demonstrated that competitive models can emerge outside the two dominant powers, even if they cannot yet match the capabilities of the largest frontier labs. Singapore and the United Arab Emirates have pursued narrower priorities, focusing on AI infrastructure and models optimized for local languages.

The episode also highlights the potential role of open-source models, which could one day reach capabilities comparable to Mythos 5 and would be difficult for any single government to control or revoke.

Anthropic has indicated it may restore access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5. Whatever timeline governs that decision, the shutdown has already demonstrated how quickly the United States government can sever global access to frontier AI — and how many governments are now determined to ensure that power cannot be exercised over them again.