Anthropic gets slapped with export controls
What does this mean for AI transformation around the world?
Hi there,
Today I had an article planned about what AI models like Anthropic’s just-classified-as-export-controlled-products Fable and Mythos mean for AI transformation and change work in our businesses.
So, I won’t be writing about that. But look at what OpenRouter published over the weekend:
When we think about how we do things better, faster, and cheaper in our businesses, we don’t want to get caught up in “which model is the best” because this is going to keep changing every few weeks for many years to come.
Source: OpenRouter
Is this just an “Anthropic thing”, or is it a new normal which changes the vendor decision calculus around the world?
If you are a US business, you are winning as you will be able to sustain a competitive advantage over your global competitors. But what are the consequences of the lower level details of what this means? None of your overseas employees or operations can benefit from this tech if it’s export controlled, can it?
For the Project Glasswing aligned logos below, what % of their US based staff are US citizens? How will their overseas operations use frontier AI under restrictions like this? What does that operating model look like if this is the new normal?
Source: Anthropic list of Project Glasswing initial participants (there are more now)
If you are a non-US business or a non-US person, you are losing, as you are now blocked from accessing the frontier as defined by most benchmarks. There is now an added challenge of - what happens to OpenAI’s next model? Is it different for OpenAI or is this now the new normal?
There are a lot of reasonable AI risk related concerns that mean some sort of argument can be constructed for why this has happened. There are also a lot of awkward diplomatic and commercial conversations that will be had around the world today if this is not resolved promptly.
I write and comment often that testing open source models and understanding how to use the tools is important. If you have been doing this, it’s not nearly as confronting a challenge as if you are locked into being an “Anthropic shop” and find yourself tools-down while you figure out how you cope with being downgraded to the obviously-worse Opus 4.8!
This is why people are more important than the technology still. If your team doesn’t have opinion and playbooks around this “risk event” - why not? Are they experimenting and innovating or waiting for top-down instruction on how to respond?
You likely don’t need Fable and Mythos - in fact, they are over-powered for the majority of business tasks. But they delivered higher capability and lower error rates for a few days - so many people now feel “loss” if they run a task on a “worse” model.
I’ll keep it short - and want to hear your reaction in the comments - after seeing the elevation of AI into “national security”, and considering the implications for both US citizens and foreign nationals alike, what is the path forward for frontier models?
Where does this go and what does it mean from a corporate governance perspective where your AI-first operating model now needs to elevate independent open-source intelligence as the core to protect your business value from disruption?
Regards,
Brennan