After three weeks of escalating confrontation, the Trump administration has lifted its block on Anthropic's most powerful AI model — clearing the way for Claude Mythos 5 to reach more than 100 US institutions, including major companies and government agencies.

In a letter sent Friday afternoon to Anthropic chief compute officer Tom Brown, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick wrote that he had "determined that appropriate safeguards are in place to permit certain trusted partners to access the Claude Mythos 5 Model." The decision, reported exclusively by Semafor, is a major de-escalation in a standoff that had pulled Amazon and other partners into the fray and left European allies in the dark.

Two weeks earlier, the administration had imposed export controls on Mythos — and its consumer-facing cousin Fable 5 — after warnings from Amazon and others that the models could be "jailbroken" for malicious purposes. The shutdown came amid US concerns that Mythos had been released to partners too closely linked to China, reportedly referring to a South Korean telecommunications provider. Lutnick's letter cited "significant progress" in the daily talks between the government and the company.

The letter is silent on Fable 5, the weaker model that had briefly been the most powerful AI system widely available to consumers. People close to the talks told Semafor they were moving toward releasing Fable as well, though that timeline remained unclear.

What makes the moment consequential is the precedent. Lutnick's letter marks the beginnings of a regulatory regime that gives the US government direct control over the release of frontier AI models. Under the new arrangement, "a license will no longer be required to export, reexport, or in-country transfer" Mythos to entities named in an annex to the letter and their foreign national employees — but only those entities. Everyone else still waits.

The de-escalation arrived on a deliberately crowded day. The same Friday, Anthropic's chief rival OpenAI released its latest model, GPT-5.6, to a short list of government-approved partners. With both frontier labs now releasing their flagship models under Washington's sign-off rather than their own, the balance of power over who gets to ship cutting-edge AI has visibly shifted — from the labs to the Commerce Department.

Commerce Department spokesman Benno Kass framed the speed as a feature, not a bug: "In just two weeks, we have worked diligently to ensure America remains the global leader in AI while safeguarding our security." The framework is being built on the fly, and many users — from non-US governments and companies to ordinary consumers — still have no clear timeline for access. European officials and other US allies have reportedly expressed frustration at their new dependence on decisions made in Washington.

For Anthropic, it is a partial reprieve: Mythos moves, but on the government's terms. For the AI industry, it is a signal that the era of unilateral model releases is over. And for everyone waiting on the other side of an annex, the question is no longer what the model can do — but who the government decides is allowed to find out.

Sources: Semafor, Washington Post