The US Government's Anthropic Models Ban Was Never About an AI Jailbreak (techcrunch.com)
- Reference: 0183914170
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/06/16/1651237/the-us-governments-anthropic-models-ban-was-never-about-an-ai-jailbreak
- Source link: https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/15/the-us-governments-anthropic-models-ban-was-never-about-an-ai-jailbreak/
> Katie Moussouris, a cybersecurity veteran and researcher who founded Luta Security, said in a [4]blog post that Anthropic recently shared with her a private copy of a paper written by security researchers describing an alleged guardrail bypass in Fable 5. (The Wall Street Journal reports that the paper's authors [5]are security researchers at Amazon .) Moussouris said that Anthropic reached out to ask for her take on the paper. Moussouris' blog post described how the researchers triggered the guardrail bypass, but said that the bypass itself "should never have triggered an export control." The difference is largely between asking an AI model to "review code for security issues" versus asking it to "fix this code."
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> The end result is largely the same, even if the questions are posed slightly differently. "The behavior described in the paper cannot meaningfully be fixed, and any attempt would only weaken the model for defense," said Moussouris, who criticized the export control directive as hasty, heavy-handed, and misguided. Moussouris and dozens of other top security researchers and experts have since called on the Trump administration to [6]revoke the export control order , calling the move to pull advanced cybersecurity capabilities from network defenders in the U.S. as "dangerous."
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> Past administrations have made sweeping decisions on knowledge gaps. For instance, language used by the U.S. government during the 2010s to fix export law covering cybersecurity tools that could also be used for cyberattacks was so broad that inadvertently, it [7]nearly outlawed legitimate security and vulnerability research. However, the Trump administration's directive appears retaliatory. Justin Hendrix, the [8]editor of Tech Policy Press , said the Trump administration's move is "likely to raise alarms in foreign capitals about the reliability of American AI for critical applications." The message is that AI companies in the United States can't be trusted to operate without interference from the U.S. government.
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> The Trump administration hasn't confirmed why it invoked its export control directive. Did the officials misread the report and freak out? Did Amazon CEO Andy Jassy say something to senior government officials that prompted the reaction, out of caution or spite? Was something lost in translation, or was this a way to pressure Anthropic, with whom the administration already has a fractious relationship? It's possible that the White House was unaware of the far-reaching consequences of the letter's demand and officials are scrambling to undo the damage of their own making. To quote Hendrix, "the climate is one of a cloud of suspicion that senior officials are picking favorites based on personal and political factors." The aftermath is that the government has set a dangerous precedent about how much control it intends to wield over the release of American-made software. This time the government took issue with Anthropic; tomorrow it could be with anyone else.
[1] https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/06/13/0546258/anthropic-suspends-all-mythos-and-fable-access-after-us-order-limiting-foreign-access
[2] https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/15/the-us-governments-anthropic-models-ban-was-never-about-an-ai-jailbreak/
[3] https://www.axios.com/2026/06/15/anthropic-white-house-fable-mythos
[4] https://www.lutasecurity.com/post/the-fable-5-export-controls-harm-us-cyber-defense
[5] https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/06/13/2227234/amazon-ceos-talks-with-us-officials-triggered-crackdown-on-anthropic-models
[6] https://it.slashdot.org/story/26/06/15/2128216/cybersecurity-vets-protest-dangerous-us-government-ban-on-anthropics-most-powerful-models
[7] https://www.wired.com/2015/07/moussouris-wassenaar-open-comment-period/
[8] https://www.techpolicy.press/anthropics-mythos-recall-and-the-white-houses-missing-ai-safety-playbook/
Either China is a threat or it isnt (Score:2)
We need to beat China at AI by bulldozing our environment and violating property rights of our citizens to build it
But we also need to allow China to use our AI without limits because reasons
Make that make sense. Both cannot be true
Re: (Score:2)
China is a threat when it allows them to game the stock market to get rich quick. China isn't a threat, when it allows them to game the stock market to get rich quick. American companies are a threat when it allows them to game the stock market to get rich quick. Getting the idea here?
Re: (Score:2)
> We need to beat China at AI by bulldozing our environment
We need to beat China at green energy by bulldozing our undeveloped land for solar panels.
Re: (Score:2)
But it does CLEARLY how that US tech is a threat, the US can turn it off any time they like for any reason.
NOW th issues for the USA is to prove they do not have spyware and a kill switch in any of their tech
The EU pushing for digital sovereignty is the smart move.
I would also be pointing out to TMSC that production in the EU will also be beneficial and they should open a plant there too.
TechCrunch also reports... (Score:2)
... that water is wet.
Bribes (Score:2)
It's about bribes. Anything this administration does is because they didn't get their cut. We put a guy who hung around Russian Mafia in charge. What did anyone expect?
Re: (Score:2)
Bribes, personal beef, or competition gave more bribes.. pick at least one tin pot dictator bullshit reason.
Re: (Score:2)
That's possible. My guess was that Glasswing detected a backdoor that the feds had insisted be inserted into some, or much, of the popular commercial software.
Re: (Score:3)
Sometimes the Trump regime has reasons besides personal wealth - in this case setting an example to corporate America of what will happen to your business if you refuse to cooperate.
it's so tiring... (Score:2)
Once again, America's economic interests and foreign relations have suffered because we elected an emotionally fragile boy-king who can only think of himself. What's it going to be next month?
Left or right... At this point I'd just be happy for some adult leadership in the room.
Re: (Score:2)
Billions of around the world are all still eagerly awaiting the most anticipated obit in human history. If someone could nudge nature along a bit, that would be fantastic.
Re:it's so tiring... (Score:5, Insightful)
Problem is, the damage is done - he's shown the world how unreliable the US can be, and they're not gonna forget. People loved to complain about America, but up until now they could typically count on America being willing (even eager) to lead... even if it was in a heavy-handed or tone-deaf manner.
"Make America Great Again" has, ironically, accelerated the country's decline towards irrelevance in the eyes of the rest of the world.
Re:it's so tiring... (Score:4, Insightful)
> Billions of around the world are all still eagerly awaiting the most anticipated obit in human history. If someone could nudge nature along a bit, that would be fantastic.
As nice as it will be to see his end, the chaos in the US is only going to increase when he passes away. The powers are entrenched, and Trump's chaotic stupidity right now actually slows their progress toward complete dominance. Once he's out of the way, the behind the scenes string pullers will be free to manipulate Vance, who will have zero backbone and less desire to be placated than Trump.
It's gonna get a *LOT* uglier before it turns around. Unless Trump dies right as the mid-term results sweep through. In which case, it'll be a mad scramble until the newly elected folks take office, and another mad scramble to undo some of the damage after.
Musk and David Sacks (Score:2)
I think it's engineered by those two, and certainly supported by them. Proof: I haven't seen Musk ask for the ban to be lifted, if he did that Trump would lift the ban.
If the Democrats win the presidency, the Trump administration just offered a legit pathway for shutting down X and x AI.
Re: (Score:1)
The order from the government and Anthropic's previous issues with Trump's government are quite factual. In the absence of an believable explanation for why the government has tried to place extraordinary restrictions on the Anthropic another time I think this article sums up the situation which does involve conjecture fairly well.
Re: (Score:2)
They're in charge. Who else could it be?
They should leave (Score:2)
Anthropic should just quietly go to another country and then announce their new headquarters.
Can't care either way... (Score:2)
I fully expect this administration to just be an extension of Trump's ego at this point. Yes, going after companies that he disagrees with is a major issue (see how the FCC pressured major networks and how quickly some of them folded).
I can't care about Anthropic getting in a spat with Trump. Anthropic were the ones that started this "our model is so good at finding security exploits, it's too dangerous" marketing campaign and people are surprised that the current administration took their word for it and b
The miss-anthropic principle (Score:2)
I'm going to miss Anthropic when the orange Lord Harkonnen tantrum toddler king wipes out the premium US AI company because they said no to him.
Easy.. (Score:1)
They are front runners in technology similar to nuclear weapons that refuse military oversight, even indirect throught cooperation. many feel one can’t have a company like that operate freely outside of ones own borders..
Model Censorship is bullshit (Score:2)
It's not only that there will always be jailbreaks, but there are also already enough competing models that have jailbreaks and/or decencensored versions. All harmful content comes also from training sets that contain public data. With a few web searches you can find the same stuff. You just have to type search queries instead of natural language questions.
Why Didn't Anthropic Sue? (Score:2)
Any other software company facing a similar order would have immediately sent a lawyer to court to file an injunction to block the order. The fact that Anthropic immediately rolled over tells us that on some level, they wanted this government action. They literally didn't object to it.
Re: (Score:2)
adding to the hype, can trump be pissed off at meta next
Re: (Score:1)
Alternately, they may have been serve a gag order, which makes a lawsuit rather tricky.
Or perhaps they are, for once, trying not to aggravate the government further? It's not like there's a 24 hour expiration date on the legal route, nor does it tend to move very quickly.
The legal route is also rather more complicated since this is a national security issue, which means federal courts, which means judges that are a lot more friendly to Trump and still haven't resolved the previous / ongoing case of whether
Re: (Score:2)
This is one of those things where the courts give deference to the administration. It is an emergency action. You can litigate it later, but due to the claim of imminent harm the courts will not block the government's action.
Think about when Trump activated the National Guard and ordered them into action in California. The courts ruled against him after the fact, but the courts refused to block the action because the governments claim was imminent harm could occur.
The court MUST give deference to the gov
TFA is shit. (Score:2)
TFT and the thrust of TFS and TFA are trash.
The jailbreak, if real, is still trivially executed and still allows using the full power of Fable 5/Mythos model. This 'logic' is fully backwards:
"Moussouris' blog post described how the researchers triggered the guardrail bypass, but said that the bypass itself "should never have triggered an export control." The difference is largely between asking an AI model to "review code for security issues" versus asking it to "fix this code." "
It is backwards because the
Re: (Score:1)
> The jailbreak, if real, is still trivially executed and still allows using the full power of Fable 5/Mythos model.
Can you provide any evidence at all for that claim? It seems rather amazing that you have to caveat "if" it's real, but you can still confidently claim that it's both "trivial" and completely bypasses every safeguard to grant you the "full power" of Mythos.
Re: (Score:2)
"If real [as described by TFA]". The onus of providing evidence for their claim does not lie on me; I claim something else given the same premises TFA provides.
TFA: The sky is purple, thus things will have a yellowish hue without other illumination.
Me: If the sky is indeed purple, then it still makes more sense for things to have a purplish hue without other illumination, because that's how reflection generally works.
You: Do you have evidence that the sky is purple?
Re: (Score:2)
Take a look at Nightmare-Eclipse (6 Windows zero days, 3 of them still unpatched), the Oracle Peoplesoft zero day, the Cisco zero day, and on top of that a remote DoS against OpenBSD, hundreds of CVEs against linux and Firefox. This is a lot of crap raining down on corporate America, possibly more than they can handle. They can especially not handle this, if zero days keep hailing in as they did. They are not geared for this.
One can all blame this on poor coding practices, maybe the bugs were found by some