On 12 June, two of the world's most advanced AI models were switched off for the entire planet. Not by accident. By order.
A government issued an export-control directive barring any foreign national, inside or outside its borders, from using them. With no way to verify nationality across a shared service in real time, the provider had no choice but to switch the models off for every customer worldwide, Americans included.
The frontier of machine reasoning, the same engines now accelerating medicine, materials, and climate science, made unavailable to 8 billion people with a few hours' notice.
This particular block may be lifted within days. The precedent is permanent: a frontier model can now be removed from the world by a single government's letter.
For years we treated access to the best tools as a settled fact, like electricity in the wall. It never was. Open science, equitable discovery, the idea that a researcher in Nairobi or Naples should reach the same frontier as one in California, cannot rest on infrastructure that one capital can switch off.
Here's what gives me hope.
Europe is not short on talent. Not short on science. Not short on values, the public-interest, rights-respecting model the world actually wants to build on. We have been short on one thing: the urgency to fund our own frontier. That excuse just ended.
So this is my open call.
To investors: European frontier labs and sovereign compute are not a moral nice-to-have anymore. They are critical infrastructure. Back them like the grids and bridges they are.
To policymakers: move at the speed of this moment. Compute, capital, talent visas, procurement that chooses European builders. A model served from Europe cannot be switched off from abroad.
To founders and researchers: build. Ambitiously, urgently, now. The world is suddenly looking for an alternative. That window will not stay open forever.
I build research infrastructure in Europe because I believe discovery belongs to everyone, not to whoever owns the servers. 12 June made the case better than I ever could.
Let's not waste it.
#SovereignAI #OpenScience #EuropeanDeepTech #AIpolicy
The US government, citing national security authorities, has issued an export control directive to suspend all access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 by any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States, including foreign national Anthropic employees.
The net effect of this order is that we must abruptly disable Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all our customers to ensure compliance.
Access to all other Claude models is not affected.
We apologize for this disruption to our customers. We believe this is a misunderstanding and are working to restore access as soon as possible.
Read our full statement:
anthropic.com/news/fable-myt…