Lutnick letter reveals criminal-penalty threat behind Anthropic Fable ban

Bloomberg obtained the June 13 letter Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick sent CEO Dario Amodei warning that Anthropic would need government permission before exporting Fable 5 or Mythos 5 to any destination or any foreign national worldwide, with criminal and civil penalties for noncompliance. The directive arrived hours before Anthropic disabled both models. The letter's broad scope effectively creates an ad-hoc licensing regime for frontier AI without legislation. Anthropic sent senior technical staff to Washington over the weekend to argue against the order, but as of midweek no compromise had been reached, and Pete Hegseth used the move to taunt Anthropic on X.

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