The Trump administration lifted export controls on Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5 AI model after the company agreed to extend an existing guardrail to prevent users from trying to access certain restricted capabilities, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The safeguard means any users trying to unlock those capabilities will be notified that their request is blocked and will have their query processed by the less-advanced Opus 4.8 AI model, the people say.
Before Anthropic cut off access to Fable 5, user requests related to sensitive cybersecurity and biology capabilities were supposed to be processed by Opus 4.8. The new safeguard, the people say, will extend this guardrail to requests related to a specific behavior identified in a paper by Amazon.
According to an analysis published by Katie Moussouris, founder and CEO of Luta Security, after reading the Amazon paper, users were able to get around a restriction on Fable 5 by asking the model to fix code, rather than identify security issues in it. While cybersecurity experts generally don’t find this behavior troubling, the administration learning about it led to the showdown with Anthropic and the imposition of export controls, which as a practical matter took the model offline.
The addition offers new detail to Commerce secretary Howard Lutnick’s letter announcing the removal of restrictions on Anthropic’s Fable 5 and Mythos 5 AI models.
“Among other things, Anthropic has agreed to proactively detect and address security risks posed by the models,” wrote Lutnick, who led the effort to bring the models back online. WIRED first obtained the letter and shared its details on Tuesday night.
The Commerce Department also ultimately cleared Fable 5 for release after researchers at its Center for AI Standards and Innovation decided the safeguards on the model were sufficiently robust for now, the people added.
Still, while Anthropic has resolved its impasse with the Commerce Department, defense secretary Pete Hegseth has told advisers there is no clear path to lift his February 28 order designating the company a supply chain risk, according to a person briefed on the matter.
So while some of Anthropic’s challenges with the administration are less pressing, they’re not entirely over.
Court Gives Republicans Midterms Boost
Trump administration officials believe they got the US Supreme Court to give them what they wanted ahead of the midterms.
In a 6-3 decision on Tuesday, the court opened the door for the first time for political parties to coordinate messaging and spending with campaigns, paving the way for Republicans to capitalize on Trump’s juggernaut fundraising operation.
And in the short term, administration officials tell Inner Loop that the ruling in National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission disproportionately benefits vulnerable Republican candidates in this midterm cycle.
Before the ruling, individual Democratic candidates traditionally raised more money from small-dollar donors than Republican candidates, who typically closed the gap by relying more on the Republican National Committee, bankrolled by billionaires.
Due to the rule allowing candidates to qualify for cheaper television advertising rates, Democratic candidates’ money generally went further. (However, the effectiveness of television advertising is increasingly seen to be on the decline.)
But with national parties like the RNC now allowed to buy unlimited ads on behalf of candidates at those lower rates, while directly coordinating messaging and attack lines, the television advertising advantage may have flipped.
The Republican National Committee entered June with $125.5 million cash on hand and no debts. By comparison, the Democratic National Committee reported $14.9 million cash on hand with debts of $18.3 million, according to its latest filings from June.
Republicans also have an on-hand advantage on the House and Senate campaign arms. The National Republican Congressional Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee each reported approximately $10 million more than its Democratic counterparts.
With November’s midterm elections right around the corner, this decision could not have come at a more inopportune time for Democrats.
This is an edition of Hugo Lowell’s Inner Loop newsletter. Read previous newsletters here.
