US pressures OpenAI and Anthropic to withhold advanced AI models from the UK

The US government is actively pressuring OpenAI and Anthropic to restrict access to their most advanced AI models from the United Kingdom, marking a dramatic escalation in how Washington treats cutting-edge artificial intelligence: less like a software product, more like enriched uranium. The restrictions, which have intensified over recent months, represent a sharp break from the historically open AI collaboration between the US and UK. They also signal that the Trump administration views frontier AI capabilities as a national security asset that shouldn’t leave American shores, even when the destination is Washington’s most reliable intelligence-sharing partner. What happened, and what got restricted In mid-June 2026, the US Commerce Department issued an export-control directive targeting Anthropic’s Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models. The stated justification centered on cybersecurity risks, specifically the potential for “jailbreaks” that could compromise built-in safety protocols. The directive was sweeping enough that Anthropic suspended foreign access to both models entirely, a global shutdown that affected all users outside the US, including the company’s own employees abroad. Ope...