Anthropic's Mythos mess just keeps getting more complicated
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Anthropic's Mythos mess just keeps getting more complicated
It sure seems like the Trump administration is just bullying Anthropic for not acquiescing to its every move, and it's the cybersecurity community who'll suffer for it
Brandon Vigliarolo
Brandon<br>Vigliarolo
Published<br>mon 22 Jun 2026 // 00:00 UTC
KETTLE It's been a week since the Trump administration established a de facto ban on Anthropic's Mythos derivative, Fable 5, and the more that comes out about the move the more it seems like Anthropic employees talking amongst themselves were on to something: Is the government just picking on the company?<br>This week on the Kettle, host Brandon Vigliarolo and Reg cybersecurity editor Jessica Lyons chat about what's going on with Mythos and Fable, what role Amazon may have played in justifying the government's move, how a prominent cybersecurity expert is calling the government's foul, and what this whole thing might mean for the next wave of models.<br>After all, even if Mythos and Fable are as advanced as Anthropic claims, it's not going to take long for some open-weight model to make the same leaps, and good luck trying to stop one of those from getting in the hands of anyone who wants them.
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You can listen to The Kettle here, as well as on Spotify and Apple Music, or read the transcript of the latest episode below. It's been lightly edited for clarity.
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Brandon (00:03)<br>Welcome to the latest episode of The Register's Kettle Podcast. I'm Brandon Villiarolo, and boy, has it been another exciting week in AI Land. If you've been following the news, you probably know what I'm talking about, especially if you're an Anthropic customer who suddenly lost access to the company's latest models. That's right. This week's topic is none other than the Trump administration's de facto ban on the release of Mythos derivative Fable 5. And with me to discuss it is our cybersecurity editor, Jessica Lyons. Thanks for coming on.<br>Jessica (00:31)<br>Hello, thanks for having me.<br>Brandon (00:33)<br>Yeah, of course. this is right up your alley, so let's get right into the heart of the matter. What did the Trump administration demand from Anthropic and what was the company's response?<br>Jessica (00:44)<br>Okay, so what happened is last Friday the Trump administration sends this letter to Anthropic and they cite national security concerns to issue an export control saying that Fable 5 and Mythos 5 cannot be used by any foreign national inside or outside of the United States. And that also includes Anthropic employees. So in response, Anthropic just disbanded both models for all of the customers to ensure compliance. So effectively nobody can use these two models.
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Brandon (01:20)<br>Yeah, I mean it seemed like the way that letter was worded, because Bloomberg got a copy of it and published it. And I think they said that they were citing the Bureau of Industry Security's authorization to what is it, "require a license for the export, re-export, or transfer of any item subject to export administration regulations, because there is an unacceptable risk of use in or diversion to a military intelligence end use or military intelligence end user." So they're basically treating it like any other dual-use technology. But that restriction is so broad, right? Like you said, even their own employees, ⁓ so yeah, they they yeah, they have no other recourse but to just stop it.<br>Jessica (01:56)<br>And it was reportedly a really short time frame too, about ninety minutes that they they received this letter and had to make a call. So they didn't have a lot of time to get any answers about what prompted this and what exactly are you asking us to do here.<br>Brandon (02:04)<br>Right, from what I was reading in some other reports that cited people familiar with the situation inside Anthropic and everything, they didn't even really get much of an explanation. They basically got the letter and they were like, "Excuse me, can you please tell us what this is about?" And the government basically said, "No …shut it down now…" It's really weird, especially then given the story you wrote about this this week, that they're basically treating this, like I said, like any dual use technology. But you wrote about a bug bounty hunter, the godmother of this movement, Katie Moussouris, who basically saw the report that the government used to justify this and she kind of called BS on the whole thing, right?
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Jessica (02:54)<br>Right. So Katie is really, really well respected in cybersecurity circles. She is the one who helped convince Microsoft to start their bug bounty program. She led the Department of Defense effort for Hack the Pentagon. She sat on several federal commissions and boards. So she's she knows what she's talking about. She knows what she's doing here. And Anthropic asked Amazon to review the models before they released Fable 5 and and...