AI has granted America vast new power
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Leaders | Our cover<br>AI has granted America vast new power<br>Its government is now the gatekeeper to frontier models—and most compute<br>Share
Illustration: The Economist/Peter Crowther
Jun 18th 2026|5 min read
THE NEWS is full of how an ignominious peace deal with Iran exemplifies a decline in American power. That conclusion could hardly be more wrong. On June 12th the Trump administration ordered Anthropic to block foreigners from Fable and Mythos, its latest and most capable frontier AI models. In an instant, everyone learned that the American government can decide who may use the world’s most important technology. You don’t get much more powerful than that.
This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline “America’s AI power grab”
From the June 20th 2026 edition<br>Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents<br>⇒Explore the edition
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