TL;DR
Amazon’s Jassy reportedly told the government that researchers used Fable 5 to obtain information about cyber attacks. That prompted the order to shut down Fable 5 and Mythos 5.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy was reportedly the source of security concerns That led the US government to force Anthropic to shut down Fable 5 and Mythos 5 to all customers on Friday. The Wall Street Journal reported that Jassy told Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and other officials that Amazon researchers used Fable 5 to obtain information that could be used in cyberattacks. The government then imposed an export control ban on both models.
The revelation adds an uncomfortable dimension to the story. Amazon is one of Anthropic’s largest investors, putting in billions and receiving a $100 billion cloud spending commitment in return. The company that finances Anthropic’s infrastructure is also the one that told the government that its models are dangerous.
An Amazon spokesperson said it is “It is not uncommon for governments to request our advice on potential security risks.” but declined to share details of the discussions. The spokesperson also pointed to a status update from AWS confirming that Amazon’s own cloud platform was affected by the model shutdown.
David Sacks, Trump’s former AI czar who now co-chairs the President’s Council of Science and Technology Advisors, offered a different version. He said “a trusted and highly credible partner of both Anthropic and the US government introduced a jailbreak.Sacos added: “The administrator asked Dario to fix the jailbreak or undeploy the model. Dario refused.“
Anthropic’s version is different. The company said it reviewed the jailbreak technique and found that it emerged “a small number of previously known minor vulnerabilities.He called the government’s response disproportionate and said the capabilities of concern are already available in other publicly accessible models. The closure affected all customers worldwide because Anthropic cannot filter foreign nationals from US users in real time.
Sequence is important for the AI industry. Amazon invested billions in Anthropic. Anthropically built models in AWS. Amazon’s CEO told the government those models pose security risks. The government used export controls to force them offline. Then AWS was hit by the shutdown. It is an ouroboros of corporate dependency and regulatory pushback.
For Anthropic, the immediate question is how quickly it will be able to restore access. For the industry in general, what matters is precedent. If a major cloud provider can trigger an export control action against its own portfolio company by raising concerns with the Secretary of the Treasury, the competitive dynamics of the AI market have just acquired a new weapon. Mythos is used by banks and government agencies. for the discovery of vulnerabilities. Each of those customers lost access due to a dispute between Anthropic’s largest investor and the government its CEO has been lobbying for more regulatory power.
