The AI race, interrupted

Anthropic’s top AI models were pulled offline after a Trump administration export control order. Here’s what happened

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The most powerful AI in the world was available for a few days. Maybe you got to try it. Most people didn't, and now, thanks to the U.S. government, nobody can.

Earlier this month, the Trump administration issued an export control order forcing Anthropic to take its two most powerful AI models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, offline for all users. The official reason was a potential security vulnerability that could allow someone to bypass the models' safety guardrails. 

So now American companies, researchers, and regular subscribers have all lost access to what many observers described as a significant advance in AI capability, even as Anthropic scrambles to smooth over the latest drama in an already dramatic year for Anthropic.

What actually happened

The sequence of events is still disputed. Researchers at Amazon $AMZN -4.75%, which is both an investor in and a major computing partner to........

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