The damage is done. You cannot build a business critical function on top of American SOTA frontier model. Especially not with the current crew in charge.
Now whether AI tech is in the same league as say Nuclear tech and therefore by any reasonable standard should be regulated is a different question.
We hit the slippery slope on a random day in June 2026 and there is no putting the genie back in the bottle. Any exec or manager that puts load bearing weight on top of Anthropic/OpenAI/Google/AmericanCorp frontier model deserves the stress.
I'm a small software business owner in Europe. I have to assume my competition is willing to pay for any business advantage they can get. And so I also have to pay for the SOTA model, whatever it is.
do you think your current operation and niche is so optimized that not using Fable would put you out of business? Or is this a hope that using Fable will allow you to stay in business?
Nonsense. Do you buy state of the art pens, pencils, printers, paper, computers, disks, etc.? No. You buy whatever is the best value for the case at hand. That’s often not the SOTA option.
But if the job requires the best intelligence you can get with an LLM, then you use that.
Taking as an assumption that the quality of your product is a function of the quality of the inference you are using: if you use an inferior model because "what if it gets export controlled again" and your competitors don't, then your competitors are likely to win.
If you don't need frontier models for you job then this is all moot, but the thread started with
> You cannot build a business critical function on top of American SOTA frontier model
Which is silly. HN likes to roleplay bringing everythgin "business critical" in house because sometimes vendors mess up. Self host, don't use the cloud, run open models locally, built redundant supply chains in case of another covid, etc etc. Sometimes the risk is real, but most of the time the risk is rare and the cost of an interruption event is less than the cost of bringing everything in house or using lower quality vendors "just in case"
This won't age well. You just need to code in a way that has fallbacks. Whether that is to older models, different companies. It's going to be a commodity (if it isn't already).
Of course Anthropic is still relevant, but people have realized they’re not special, and between this and the ID verification thing, they’ve given up a ton of their relevance vs a month ago.
I bought a GLM 1 year subscription and changed my environment variables to use Claude Code... yep the same one that is using stegonography to send details about users to the model. China knows where I live, I'm not getting ripped off or rug pulled on their models either.
are export controls the right thing ? Probably not.
but the american economy is over-exposed on "A.I" - the capital expenditure, while the Chinese are proving you don't need to spend tons of capital to get close to the frontier.
the Chinese have better building capacity & cheaper energy. that means the market has to correct at some point.
It's a little too later for export controls. Chinese models have made massive gains through legitimate research but also being trained on billions of tokens from Claude/GPT. The politicians have no idea how to stop that from happening so they pull the only lever they know.
Tom Brown
Chief Compute Officer
Anthropic
548 Market Street
San Francisco, CA 94104
Dear Mr. Brown:
Since the issuance of my previous letters, dated June 12, 2026 and June 26, 2026, Anthropic has taken steps in close coordination with the U.S. government to address
the risks associated with Claude Mythos 5 and Claude Fable 5. Among other things, Anthropic has agreed to proactively detect and address security risks associated with the models; to work diligently with the U.S. government on protocols and standards and releases for Mythos, Fable, and future models; and to inform the U.S. government of any malicious activity.
In light of these actions and commitments, as well as the Bureau of Industry and Security's evaluation of the diversion risks now presented by Claude Mythos 5 and Claude Fable 5, the controls in the June 12 letter are withdrawn. A license is no longer required for the export, reexport, or in-country transfer, including deemed export or deemed reexport, of the Mythos or Fable models.
Commerce reserves the right to reevaluate the decisions made in this letter and the necessity of reimposing a license requirement, should circumstances change or should Anthropic fail to adhere to its commitments.
If you have any questions about this letter, please contact me or the Under Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security, Jeffrey Kessler, at (202) 255-1864.
I don't think this is the case just because of the 'fallback' method they described, where suspicious requests are routed to Opus 4.8. If the model was degraded for certain categories of knowledge, then they'd probably be fine letting the model answer to it. IMO, of course
Either way, I do hope they lift those draconian bans. Using the model was a terrible experience because of the constant downgrades. I didn't manage to harden my own projects before Fable got banned.
My only hope is that they don't overdo the guardrails. Claude's been one of the best coding models, and it'd be nice if it stayed that way for real and legitimate developer workflows.
Considering US Govt originally said Fable 5 should only be used by Americans and blocked off everywhere else, and that all of a sudden a big change of heart - it makes me wonder if the Fable 5 that I might be able to use tomorrow will be the same Fable 5 an American can use? I just want to know the specifics of what changed. Because something has changed. Unless tomorrow, we can activate Fable 5, "But first, we need to scan your eyeballs for Persona!"
I just finished reading Incorruptible and a central theme (Anthropic is a case study) is that trust is singularly the most important currency a business has. The past few weeks have done wonders for Anthropic’s marketing but just as much if not more damage to the trust factor. Businesses will continue to use Anthropic because it’s the default and accessible where it matters (AWS, Azure, GCP, Databricks, Snowflake, etc). But the trust factor has dropped. It’ll be interesting to see if they can turn the tide. Maybe Fable will be too awesome for people to care about the past few weeks?
Most people don't care about trust anymore, we live in a low trust society where this is to be expected. People gladly line up to be poisoned by fast food restaurants and trade 1/3 of their life for pieces of paper on a daily basis.
The classic chaotic governance model and creation of an uncertain business environment by the Trump admin in the most important industry for the US economy.
If this is the most important industry for the US economy, the US is screwed. and .... Hopefully you're correct.
In past Empires kings bet their entire nations future on the words of soothsayers , people who said they could predict the future. It seems like Machine Learning engineers are the magicians of Empire of the modern age.
Fable was (is) a major leap forward for my development tasks. The quality of the model compared to Opus 4.8 (when I last used it before the ban hammer) was night and day. Fable single-shotting complex and complete applications was a beautiful thing and I can't wait to get back to developing with it.
>Anthropic has taken steps in close coordination with the U.S. government to address the risks associated with Claude Mythos 5 and Claude Fable 5. Among other things, Anthropic has agreed to proactively detect and address security risks associated with the models; to work diligently with the U.S. government on protocols and standards and releases for Mythos, Fable, and future models; and to inform the U.S. government of any malicious activity.
ah, I see. so, Chinese models are getting banned soon.
Weren't they already doing that since the beginning? Fable released with a data retention policy. I assumed US government surveillance was the reason for this.
The damage is done. You cannot build a business critical function on top of American SOTA frontier model. Especially not with the current crew in charge.
Now whether AI tech is in the same league as say Nuclear tech and therefore by any reasonable standard should be regulated is a different question.
We hit the slippery slope on a random day in June 2026 and there is no putting the genie back in the bottle. Any exec or manager that puts load bearing weight on top of Anthropic/OpenAI/Google/AmericanCorp frontier model deserves the stress.
I'm a small software business owner in Europe. I have to assume my competition is willing to pay for any business advantage they can get. And so I also have to pay for the SOTA model, whatever it is.
This is a great recipe for going out of business.
What concrete business advantage are you getting from LLMs?
Speed.
do you think your current operation and niche is so optimized that not using Fable would put you out of business? Or is this a hope that using Fable will allow you to stay in business?
Nonsense. Do you buy state of the art pens, pencils, printers, paper, computers, disks, etc.? No. You buy whatever is the best value for the case at hand. That’s often not the SOTA option.
Sure but that's orthogonal.
Yes you use the right tool for the job.
But if the job requires the best intelligence you can get with an LLM, then you use that.
Taking as an assumption that the quality of your product is a function of the quality of the inference you are using: if you use an inferior model because "what if it gets export controlled again" and your competitors don't, then your competitors are likely to win.
If you don't need frontier models for you job then this is all moot, but the thread started with
> You cannot build a business critical function on top of American SOTA frontier model
Which is silly. HN likes to roleplay bringing everythgin "business critical" in house because sometimes vendors mess up. Self host, don't use the cloud, run open models locally, built redundant supply chains in case of another covid, etc etc. Sometimes the risk is real, but most of the time the risk is rare and the cost of an interruption event is less than the cost of bringing everything in house or using lower quality vendors "just in case"
Unless you have concrete evidence via evals that SOTA is actually needed, you’re just buying into the hype.
This won't age well. You just need to code in a way that has fallbacks. Whether that is to older models, different companies. It's going to be a commodity (if it isn't already).
> You cannot build a business critical function on top of American SOTA frontier model.
Yes 1000%, please, all my European competition please don't use mythos whatever you do it's total USA trash and the Chinese models work better anyway.
Nobody cares about this temporary "ban" by the US government. If anything it only increased the mystique of the two models.
I think Europe and Canada are just happy not to be frozen out of AI access completely at this point.
All the discussion this week have been about GLM, Qwen, etc. Both over 1000 comments in the last couple days.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48709670
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48721903
Of course Anthropic is still relevant, but people have realized they’re not special, and between this and the ID verification thing, they’ve given up a ton of their relevance vs a month ago.
I bought a GLM 1 year subscription and changed my environment variables to use Claude Code... yep the same one that is using stegonography to send details about users to the model. China knows where I live, I'm not getting ripped off or rug pulled on their models either.
Chinese models brought the building down.
are export controls the right thing ? Probably not.
but the american economy is over-exposed on "A.I" - the capital expenditure, while the Chinese are proving you don't need to spend tons of capital to get close to the frontier.
the Chinese have better building capacity & cheaper energy. that means the market has to correct at some point.
It's a little too later for export controls. Chinese models have made massive gains through legitimate research but also being trained on billions of tokens from Claude/GPT. The politicians have no idea how to stop that from happening so they pull the only lever they know.
You really think China doesn't have massive amounts of capital expenditure related to AI? They're actively bootstrapping an entire chip industry.... https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-prepares-295-billi...
I trust Chinese companies with my data way more than the corporations of the 4th Reich.
Is there a good track record of privacy there?
Here's a copy of the letter that Commerce sent to Anthropic (note who it'a NOT addressed to...)
Source: https://x.com/AndrewCurran_/status/2072103733715194048?s=20
-------
June 30, 2026
Tom Brown Chief Compute Officer Anthropic 548 Market Street San Francisco, CA 94104
Dear Mr. Brown:
Since the issuance of my previous letters, dated June 12, 2026 and June 26, 2026, Anthropic has taken steps in close coordination with the U.S. government to address the risks associated with Claude Mythos 5 and Claude Fable 5. Among other things, Anthropic has agreed to proactively detect and address security risks associated with the models; to work diligently with the U.S. government on protocols and standards and releases for Mythos, Fable, and future models; and to inform the U.S. government of any malicious activity.
In light of these actions and commitments, as well as the Bureau of Industry and Security's evaluation of the diversion risks now presented by Claude Mythos 5 and Claude Fable 5, the controls in the June 12 letter are withdrawn. A license is no longer required for the export, reexport, or in-country transfer, including deemed export or deemed reexport, of the Mythos or Fable models.
Commerce reserves the right to reevaluate the decisions made in this letter and the necessity of reimposing a license requirement, should circumstances change or should Anthropic fail to adhere to its commitments.
If you have any questions about this letter, please contact me or the Under Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security, Jeffrey Kessler, at (202) 255-1864.
Sincerely,
Howard W. Lutnick
------
Jeff is now going to have to change his number. Can’t imagine all the calls or messages he must be getting now
Mildly surprising they lifted export restrictions for Mythos too. Isn’t that Fable minus the safety layer?
Presumably there are different levels of safety. I assumed Fable was a nerfed Mythos, and not just via safety harnesses but actual model degredation.
I don't think this is the case just because of the 'fallback' method they described, where suspicious requests are routed to Opus 4.8. If the model was degraded for certain categories of knowledge, then they'd probably be fine letting the model answer to it. IMO, of course
Anthropic claims the only difference is the draconian bans on cybersecurity and biology queries.
The Sol benchmarks show Fable has slightly lower performance compared to Mythos.
https://openai.com/index/previewing-gpt-5-6-sol/
I assume they did something to the model itself.
Either way, I do hope they lift those draconian bans. Using the model was a terrible experience because of the constant downgrades. I didn't manage to harden my own projects before Fable got banned.
The session reverts to opus if it trips a limiter. Is the benchmark detecting and correcting for that?
For those who haven't been following this closely, who is the missing addressee?
Dario Amodei (Anthropic's CEO) had previously been directly liaising with the government and apparently it wasn't going well.
Any news why?
They don't speak the same [proverbial] language essentially. Dario and the WH talk about this stuff completely differently.
https://archive.is/9k7qt#selection-2001.41-2001.49 https://archive.is/dybOE
Probably didn't kiss ass as much as most other tech CEOs.
How many people are going to call Jeffrey Kessler? lol.
I bet you that nothing changed with how Fable 5 is run.
"Anthropic has agreed to proactively detect and address security risks associated with the models" LOL, this was already happening.
This clown car administration just keeps making shit up and then backpedalling in a way that just leaves everything worse.
My only hope is that they don't overdo the guardrails. Claude's been one of the best coding models, and it'd be nice if it stayed that way for real and legitimate developer workflows.
Considering US Govt originally said Fable 5 should only be used by Americans and blocked off everywhere else, and that all of a sudden a big change of heart - it makes me wonder if the Fable 5 that I might be able to use tomorrow will be the same Fable 5 an American can use? I just want to know the specifics of what changed. Because something has changed. Unless tomorrow, we can activate Fable 5, "But first, we need to scan your eyeballs for Persona!"
I just finished reading Incorruptible and a central theme (Anthropic is a case study) is that trust is singularly the most important currency a business has. The past few weeks have done wonders for Anthropic’s marketing but just as much if not more damage to the trust factor. Businesses will continue to use Anthropic because it’s the default and accessible where it matters (AWS, Azure, GCP, Databricks, Snowflake, etc). But the trust factor has dropped. It’ll be interesting to see if they can turn the tide. Maybe Fable will be too awesome for people to care about the past few weeks?
Most people don't care about trust anymore, we live in a low trust society where this is to be expected. People gladly line up to be poisoned by fast food restaurants and trade 1/3 of their life for pieces of paper on a daily basis.
Silicon valley may be a low trust society but I havent given up hope on the rest of it yet.
>We’ve received notice that the Department of Commerce has lifted export controls on Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5.
>We'll begin restoring access tomorrow, and will share an update soon.
>We’re grateful to our users for their patience, and to everyone who worked with us on redeploying the models.
From Anthropic on Twitter
I wonder if it's still good
Yeah, good question. I wonder if they fixed the obnoxious safety classifier too.
If anything that'll be more obnoxious because they have to show the government that it's safe.
Isn't the warrantless mass surveillance enough?
I see, so that explains why people are starting to talk about Claude Fable 5 and how I'm now going to have to buy $6,000 of compute for our startup
How to light 6k on fire.
The classic chaotic governance model and creation of an uncertain business environment by the Trump admin in the most important industry for the US economy.
If this is the most important industry for the US economy, the US is screwed. and .... Hopefully you're correct.
In past Empires kings bet their entire nations future on the words of soothsayers , people who said they could predict the future. It seems like Machine Learning engineers are the magicians of Empire of the modern age.
>If this is the most important industry for the US economy, the US is screwed
Depends on how economically useful AI turns out to be. It will be useful, but it needs to be VERY useful for the current valuations.
>In past Empires kings bet their entire nations future on the words of soothsayers
I think AI's rise is much closer to the story of factory machines and computers than to soothsayers and emperors.
Debating if I should re-sub to the Max plan now (in case they grandfather people in some how) or if I should just wait and see what they announce.
https://xcancel.com/AnthropicAI/status/2072106151890809341
https://archive.is/HSIxa
https://archive.is/BbxA1
https://megalodon.jp/2026-0701-0918-51/https://x.com:443/Ant...
Good to hear. I was going to cancel my subscription if I couldn't use Fable. No point in paying Anthropic to train models I can't use.
Fable was (is) a major leap forward for my development tasks. The quality of the model compared to Opus 4.8 (when I last used it before the ban hammer) was night and day. Fable single-shotting complex and complete applications was a beautiful thing and I can't wait to get back to developing with it.
All aboard the hype train!
They need Lehane or… since OpenAI got him, what is Fabiani up to these days?
>Anthropic has taken steps in close coordination with the U.S. government to address the risks associated with Claude Mythos 5 and Claude Fable 5. Among other things, Anthropic has agreed to proactively detect and address security risks associated with the models; to work diligently with the U.S. government on protocols and standards and releases for Mythos, Fable, and future models; and to inform the U.S. government of any malicious activity.
ah, I see. so, Chinese models are getting banned soon.
Who knows - this could be the last model we see from Anthropic. Or it just becomes the wild west and we figure it out as we go.
Isn't it the wild west already?
On a lark, I asked Claude to compare AI to the wild west a while ago. It raised three points of similarity:
- Land-grab economics
- Lack of regulation
- Changing social and professional attitudes.
Whatever it is, it's a wild ride regardless.
For non-Americans especially it does look possible to be the last one.
So much for way too dangerous end of the world
So after this publicity they got, they will release a locked down version of the models, did I get that right?
Sounds more like they are implementing mass surveillance and reporting whatever the US Gov wants for 'security reasons' back to them.
Weren't they already doing that since the beginning? Fable released with a data retention policy. I assumed US government surveillance was the reason for this.
Yeah, it feels like a honeypot at this point. Gonna go with GLM instead
This is great news,
I'm sure many teams couldn't do their best work because Claude Fable 5 was unavailable.
I wonder what their hiring pages look like now, are they starting to remove job postings?
there is no way Fable and Mythos had such an impact in such a short amount of time that people were hiring based on it.
They certainly are now that the export ban is lifted.
... Care to explain your thoughts on this?
I'm absolutely fascinated.