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The Fable Rug Pull: White House Blocks Anthropic's Best Model
At 29:20 · chapter starts 28:00
Leo Laporte describes being personally affected by the Fable block: he was in the middle of a major software rewrite using the model when it simply vanished mid-session. The administration's justification — that Anthropic represented a 'supply chain risk,' a designation normally reserved for foreign adversaries — was applied to a domestic American company without congressional consultation or scientific review. Dario Amodei flew to the G7 to meet with the president, while Pete Hegseth publicly celebrated the block. Within days of the restriction, France's Mistral, China's Deepseek, and ZAI's GLM model released competitive frontier models, and developers worldwide began reconsidering their dependence on American AI platforms. The partial restoration — Mythos to 100+ US institutions under Project Glasswing — offered limited reassurance. Crucially, the original restriction remained: no foreign nationals could use the models. Since Anthropic has no way to verify citizenship, they had to block everyone. The panel agrees the lasting damage is to trust: if the U.S. government can unilaterally shut down an American product at any time, why build your workflow around it?
Trump came to office promising zero AI regulation. Six months later, his Commerce Department blocked an American AI model and OpenAI began releasing new models only to government-approved partners. The administration did a complete 180 — and industry observers suspect it's political, not technical.
