Last Friday, the Trump administration imposed export controls on Anthropic's new AI model Fable 5, sparking controversy among cybersecurity experts. The Department of Commerce's decision was reportedly prompted by recent reports from Amazon and another cybersecurity researcher claiming to have jailbroken Fable 5 within days of its public release.
Background and Context
Anthropic has taken steps to limit the risks around the commercial sale of its Mythos model, including declining to release it publicly and developing guardrails for Fable 5 that would default its answers to older, less powerful models around sensitive topics like cybersecurity and biological warfare. However, the Trump administration was concerned that if researchers in the U.S. could jailbreak the model, so could America's foreign adversaries.
Expert Reactions
Cybersecurity expert Katie Moussouris disagreed with the White House's actions, stating that the research has not demonstrated that anyone has been able to circumvent Fable 5's safeguards and access the kind of dangerous new capabilities that have worried officials. Moussouris noted that Fable 5's capabilities are foundational to what makes it and other frontier models valuable for cybersecurity defense.
Moussouris previously provided technical expertise to the Waasenaar Agreement, a voluntary multilateral security agreement around controlling exports for both munitions and dual use technology. Based on the research she's seen, she called placing export restrictions on all foreign sales of Fable 5 "heavy handed" and "misguided."
Lawmaker Reactions
Senator Mark Warner, D-Va., told CyberScoop that while there may be circumstances where restrictions on the export of frontier AI models are warranted, those decisions must be grounded in a transparent, risk-based process with clear rules and consistent standards. Warner argued that the Trump administration's approach has been the opposite and called for Congress to pass a statutory framework for testing and approving frontier AI models based on transparency, predictability, and fairness.
Anthropic's Testing and Results
Anthropic reported that it subjected Fable 5 to 1,000 hours of testing from internal and external red teams, with no universal jailbreaks found that would remove those guardrails or allow the model to access Mythos for cyber and biology work. Moussouris is one of dozens of cybersecurity experts who signed an open letter calling on the Trump administration to "Free Fable."
Open Letter and Community Reaction
The researchers say that while Mythos-class models are "quite good" at identifying and exploiting vulnerabilities in software code, they "are not uniquely good" compared to other frontier models used for cybersecurity defense. The letter questions whether the issues found in the jailbreaking reports would even qualify as offensive capabilities and notes that they can be reproduced in other commercial and open-source models.
The White House decision comes as AI companies face increasing backlash from a public that is now overwhelming calling for more robust government intervention. A Johns Hopkins University poll in May found broad, bipartisan support for AI regulations, with 73% calling for bans on AI-generated images and video, 68% calling for labels on AI content, 75% wanting disclosure laws around when they interact with AI chatbots, and 70% calling for "the right to interact with a human rather than an AI in medical, legal, educational, and government settings."
- 73% of respondents called for bans on AI-generated images and video
- 68% called for labels on AI content
- 75% wanted disclosure laws around when they interact with AI chatbots
- 70% called for the right to interact with a human rather than an AI in certain settings
A global survey of 18,000 people released this week found that the top four concerns most people have around AI all revolve around the tool's ability to spread misinformation, create deepfakes to embarrass or hurt others, make it easier for criminals to hack into victim networks, and help terrorists create new weapons.
Cybersecurity experts disagree with the White House's decision to impose export controls on Anthropic's Fable 5 AI model, citing lack of evidence for unique threats.
Senior reporter Tim Starks contributed reporting for this story.
Source: CyberScoop