Some context first. Ever since Anthropic launched Mythos in April, the company has marketed it as some kind of Doomsday cyber machine that could wreak havoc on the internet if released too widely — which is why, before the ban, only around 150 vetted companies and government organizations had access to it at all. The goal was helping defenders secure their software and services before the bad guys could reach Mythos-like capabilities.

So what triggered the ban? Two subsequent events, reportedly. The first: Anthropic gave a South Korean telecom access to Mythos through its limited partner program, and U.S. officials grew alarmed after identifying the company as one they suspected had ties to China. (The company, widely reported to be SK Telecom, has denied any China connection.) Amazon CEO Andy Jassy also reportedly alerted the administration after Amazon’s own researchers, he said, found a way around Fable 5’s safeguards. Anthropic disputes the “jailbreak” label, calling it a narrow, already-patched issue rather than a wholesale defeat of the model’s safety measures.

The result was the same: the Commerce Department issued an export control directive, and Anthropic had to scramble to immediately limit access to its products within roughly 90 minutes of being notified, by some accounts.

None of this is new, though. Governments have tried to use export controls to limit the proliferation of what they see as dangerous cyber technology for decades, but their track record has been middling at best.