Tech world reacts to Trump export controls on Anthropic's new AI models

Anthropic’s announcement that the Trump Administration ordered it to block foreign access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 — prompting the company to completely cut off access to those AI models — sent a shock wave across the tech world.

Here are some reactions on social media to the latest skirmish in the hostilities between the White House and Anthropic.

Dean W. Ball, senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation

“If this is true, it is just baffling. An administration whose posture is that we should export advanced AI chips to China, which also wants to ban… Britain (and every other non-American on Earth)… from using our best models? I have no words.

“I can’t tell if this is lawfare against Anthropic in particular or extreme national-security hawkery. Regardless, it is simply cartoonish.”

Peter Girnus, senior threat researcher at Zero Day Initiative

“Two things are true at once.

“First: Anthropic spent months marketing Mythos as too dangerous to release. Sam Altman said it was ‘incredible marketing to say we have built a bomb. The Commerce Department has now formally agreed it is a bomb. If you describe your product as a munition in every press release, eventually a government takes you at your word. They wrote the legal predicate themselves and called it a brand.

“Second: we have run this experiment before. In the 90s the government classified encryption as a munition under ITAR. Activists defeated it by printing PGP’s source code as a book, because books are protected speech and floppy disks were arms exports. A t-shirt with three lines of RSA Perl was legally a munition. The controls collapsed because math does not stop at customs.

“The new wrinkle is the ‘deemed export’ rule: showing controlled technology to a foreign national inside the US counts as exporting it abroad. Which is why Anthropic’s own foreign-national employees are now locked out of the model they built. The munition is in the building and the people who made it are not allowed to look at it.”

Marc Andreesen, partner at Andreessen Horowitz

Chris McGuire, senior fellow for China and emerging technologies at the Council on Foreign Relations

“I actually think targeted export controls on model access are prudent. But across the board controls on all countries on a single model, without any warning, is highly questionable. Imposing equally broad deemed export controls, which also restrict access to foreign nationals, is just absurd—and obviously will result in the model being pulled from distribution, as just happened.

“Export controls are a critical tool, and an extremely powerful one. Used correctly, they have the potential to massively extend the US lead in AI. Used incorrectly, they will stifle AI development. The Department of Commerce’s export control strategy has been completely incoherent and sabotaging. It is sending powerful AI chips to China, not enforcing controls that would prevent Chinese smuggling, creating massive loopholes that allow AI chips to be sent to China, and preventing US AI companies from releasing their own models.

“This has to stop. We urgently need a smart export control strategy that applies robust export controls to deny our adversaries access to advanced technology, while advantaging US companies. Commerce and BIS are consistently doing the opposite. If BIS doesn’t understand how to use its authorities or what the implications are of its actions, then it needs to find some new personnel who can actually execute a competent export control strategy. The current one is incoherent and self-defeating.”

Matthew Pines, CEO of Physical Superintelligence

“this is gonna send shockwaves through every lab and neolab… U.S. export control laws operate under a strict liability standard… they are a very sharp blade…”

Dan Shipper, CEO of Every

“my take on this situation currently is that they’ll unban it in a few days and the net effect will be increased demand for Fable

“however this kind of thing is extremely disruptive and distracting for people inside of the company. the only comparable scenario i can remember is Sam Altman’s firing which was resolved relatively quickly. even though things went back to the way they were, i do think that disrupted their momentum for a while

“hoping for a good outcome here!”

Josh Pigford, founder of Baremetrics

“Anthropic has not done theirselves ANY favors with their hyperbole over the past 6-12 months. But I also guarantee this has zero to do with national security.”

Peter Barnett, researcher at Machine Intelligence Research Institute

“If it’s true that USG export controlled Fable because another company said they could jailbreak it, then we might be stumbling into a regime where AI companies red team each others’ models before the USG allows deployment.”

Ryan Brewer, member of technical staff at OpenAI

“Eventually you will only be able to access frontier intelligence in a small set of buildings in the Bay Area if the US govt continues in this direction. Shame”

Ketan Ramakrishnan, Yale Law professor

“The federal government is going to regulate AI developers aggressively. The question is whether this regulation will be done intelligently or not; whether Congress and public deliberation will have a role or just opaque executive action; etc”