Bizarre Trump order sees Aussies cut off from vital AI modelAustralians woke up Saturday morning to find they’ve been locked out of Anthropic’s latest AI model.Adrian Zorzut2 min readJune 14, 2026 - 1:52AMAustralians have booted off powerful new AI software thanks to a bizarre order issued by US President Donald Trump in the dead of night.Anthropic said it cut off connection to its most advanced AI models after being ordered by the Trump administration to suspend access for all foreign nationals.The US company recently gave Australian companies and individuals access to the cutting-edge models dubbed “too dangerous” for the general public to use.Those with access got a rude awakening when this morning (June 13) Anthropic published a blog confirming it received an export control directive from the Trump administration to bar access for anyone outside the US to its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 AI models.Dario Amodei, CEO & Co-Founder of Anthropic, recently cut a deal with the Australian government. Picture: AP Photo/Jeff ChiuAccording to Anthropic, US government declared access to the powerful new models a “national security concern” and believes the models’ safeguards are being bypassed.The company voluntarily places blocks on the use of its models to stop their use in cyber attack, bioweapons development and other harmful activities.Others you may likenewsnews“The net effect of this order is that we must abruptly disable Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all our customers to ensure compliance,” Anthropic said.“Access to all other Anthropic models will not be affected.”Anthropic, the creater of Claude, said it believed there was a “misunderstanding” and it was working to restore full access as soon as possible.It comes as the company called for a global pause on AI development, saying the systems were getting closer to making their own successors.Anthropic revealed it was increasingly asking its AI to develop itself – a shift from when “humans drove every step in its development cycle”.The US tech giant, which recently announced plans to become a listed company, said if systems were “given enough compute, that trend points to an AI system capable of fully autonomously designing and developing its own successor”“This is called recursive self-improvement. We are not there yet, and recursive self-improvement is not inevitable,” executive Marina Favaro and co-founder Jack Clark wrote in a blog post titled When AI Builds Itself.Graphs shared by Anthropic in its When AI Builds Itself blog post. Picture: Supplied“But it could come sooner than most institutions are prepared for.”As of May, Claude wrote 80 per cent of the code Anthropic used – an explosion from the “low single digits” this number was in February 2025.In 2024 Claude Opus 3 could do tasks a human could complete in four minutes, but by 2027 Anthropic believes AI “could be capable of tasks that take a person weeks”.More CoverageBleak sign AI has finally gone too farAlex BlairTravel bookings about to change foreverEmma Kirk“If it were possible to effectively slow the development of this technology to give ourselves more time to deal with its immense implications, we think that would likely be a good thing,” the blog post said.“But if a slowdown simply lets the least cautious actors catch up technologically, it could leave everyone less safe.“Without a global co-ordination mechanism, companies and governments will have to make difficult decisions about safety while under competitive and geopolitical pressures.”These revelations led advocacy group PauseAI Australia to call on the federal government to engage in “urgent” international negotiations on a pause in frontier AI development.Read related topics:Donald TrumpJoin the conversationAdd your comment to this storyTo join the conversation, please log in. Don't have an account? RegisterJoin the conversation, you are commenting as LogoutMore related storiesBreaking NewsHuge find in cancer screeningA national lung cancer screening program has detected a surprising number of cases in its first year, potentially saving hundreds of lives.Read moreIncidentsWoman attacked by shark at Sydney beachA woman has suffered horrific injuries after being bitten by a shark off a popular beach, in the fourth such attack in Aussie waters in recent weeks.Read moreSuperannuation‘Not built for us’: Millions miss out on superAustralia’s superannuation system was built for traditional employees which is leaving millions of people exposed at the end of their working lives.Read more