Jassy Alert Led to U.S. Export Control on Anthropic

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy alerted U.S. officials after Amazon researchers reported a method to prompt Anthropic’s Fable 5 into producing instructions that could be used for cyberattacks. The federal government issued an export control that took effect Friday night and required Anthropic to suspend public access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5.

The outreach began Thursday when Amazon researchers flagged the jailbreak. Jassy contacted senior administration officials and at least five other companies submitted warnings. White House teams assessed the reported vulnerability and reached out to Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, who resisted requests to voluntarily take the model offline.

David Sacks, co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, described the administration’s action as reluctant: “In reaction, the Admin issued the export control. The Admin did this reluctantly.” He added officials expect Anthropic to address the reported jailbreak so the restriction can be lifted.

Anthropic disputed the severity of the reported problem in a blog post, saying the directive stemmed from a misunderstanding about the threat posed by a “non-universal jailbreak” described in an unnamed report. The company said it is working to restore access for affected users and pushed back on requests to take the model offline before applying an internal fix.

Amazon declined to confirm whether Jassy’s call led directly to the export control. An Amazon spokesperson said governments frequently seek the company’s counsel on security risks and that Amazon does not disclose details of those conversations.

The action had an immediate market effect on some decentralized AI and blockchain tokens. Bittensor’s native token rose about 24% in 24 hours, Venice Token increased roughly 16%, and Near Protocol gained around 6%. Anthropic’s Claude chatbot has an estimated 18,900 monthly active users, a reference point for the user base affected while access remains restricted.

Officials involved in the response said the export control followed multiple corporate warnings and an assessment of potential misuse. The administration described the restriction as temporary and tied to remediation steps by Anthropic; no public timeline has been provided for when access might be restored.