EU Rejects US Security Claims On Anthropic AI Models

Europe poses no security threat to the United States, the EU's top technology official said Monday, after Anthropic disabled two leading AI models under a US national security order.

Key Points:

Anthropic Models Suspended

The US Commerce Department issued the directive on Jun. 12, ordering Anthropic to block every foreign national from its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 systems. The ban reached users abroad and inside the United States, the company's own non-citizen staff included.

Anthropic switched off both models for everyone within hours rather than build new controls overnight.

Officials pointed to the models' cybersecurity reach, since Mythos 5 can locate and exploit software flaws, some of them never seen before.

Anthropic disputed that logic, saying the trigger was a narrow request to read a codebase and fix errors, not a universal threat.

The firm's weaker models, including Claude Opus 4.8, stayed online throughout, a sign the order targeted only frontier capability.

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Virkkunen Rejects Risk Claim

Henna Virkkunen, the EU's executive vice-president for tech sovereignty, rejected the security framing outright. Europe is an economic opportunity and a trusted partner, not a security risk, she said on social media. She also pressed Washington to cooperate on powerful AI, calling it a shared global challenge.

The remarks carried weight beyond protocol, as Virkkunen urged quick adoption of an EU package favoring European firms in the most sensitive cloud and AI public contracts. The bloc has called for cooperation on frontier AI, while warning that contingency steps must not single out allied partners.

Europe Backs Mistral

The order rattled European capitals. Jordan Bardella, the National Rally leader and a possible future French president, argued that Paris should accelerate support for Mistral AI, the bloc's main rival to Anthropic and OpenAI. Brussels notes that non-EU companies supply more than 80 percent of Europe's digital products and infrastructure.

The clash extends a rough stretch between Anthropic and the White House.

The company is already suing over its place on a federal supply-chain blacklist, imposed after it refused to let the US military use its models.

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