Cybersecurity experts urge US to lift export ban on Anthropic AI models
10 reported1 unconfirmed
A group of 76 cybersecurity experts, including several well-known industry veterans, published an open letter to the U.S. government asking it to lift an export control order on Anthropic’s Fable and Mythos models. The letter argues that the order has taken the best models away from cybersecurity defenders who need them to find vulnerabilities and secure software. On Friday, the U.S. government ordered Anthropic to limit export of the models citing national security concerns, without explaining specific reasons, according to Anthropic. In response, the company suspended access to the models for all users worldwide. The letter states that pulling the best capabilities from defenders without good reason is dangerous, especially as adversaries are advancing rapidly. The signatories include former Facebook chief of security Alex Stamos, Bugcrowd founder Casey Ellis, and former Apple security manager Jon Callas, among others.
What’s reported
76 cybersecurity experts signed an open letter asking the U.S. government to lift the export control order on Anthropic’s Fable and Mythos models.
The U.S. government ordered Anthropic to limit export of the models on Friday, citing national security concerns without explaining specific reasons, according to Anthropic.
Anthropic suspended access to the models for all users worldwide in response.
The letter says the action has taken the best models away from defenders and is dangerous.
Mythos launched as a preview in April, with initial access given to around 50 companies, later expanded to about 150 organizations in 15 countries.
Fable, a public version of Mythos released last week, had strict guardrails that many cybersecurity experts found blocked essentially any cybersecurity-related prompts.
Anthropic said the export order may have been based on a report of a method to bypass Fable’s guardrails, demonstrated by Amazon researchers in a non-public paper.
Signatory Katie Moussouris said the paper did not demonstrate a real jailbreak; researchers asked Fable to fix open source code with known vulnerabilities after it initially refused to review code for security issues.
The open letter says the method in the Amazon paper can be replicated on OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.8 and Sonnet, and Chinese models like Kimi 2.7.
The letter asks for transparent, fairly enforced regulations created by a democratic rule-making process based on scientific research.
Open questions
The specific reasons behind the U.S. government’s export control order are not explained in the article.
Key figures
Alex Stamos, former Facebook chief of security
Casey Ellis, founder of Bugcrowd
Jon Callas, former Apple security design and architecture manager
Paul Vixie, computer scientist
Dino Dai Zovi, former head of applied security engineering at Block
Katie Moussouris, founder of Luta Security
Rachel Tobac, CEO of SocialProof Security
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, TechCrunch reporter
Sources: TechCrunch
