The United States has verbally assured India that access to advanced AI technologies, once granted, will not be withdrawn without notice, according to a Hindu report. India reportedly requested this commitment after the Trump administration unexpectedly suspended Anthropic’s two most powerful models for all foreign nationals earlier this month.
What India was actually asking: India requested clarification from the US government regarding its regulatory framework following Washington’s suspension of Anthropic’s Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models under an export control order. MeitY Secretary S. Krishnan, speaking at the second Pax Silica Summit in Washington on Thursday, stated, “We can’t have abrupt cutoffs” if India is to integrate these tools into its digital infrastructure and public services.
Such a disruption could halt long-term AI initiatives, disrupt digital platforms that depend on continuous AI functionality, and undermine developmental goals that require consistent access to technology.
What the US said — and what it didn’t put in writing: Krishnan stated there was “an understanding,” not a formal guarantee, that “access to technology, once it is provided, will not be cut off.” He described this as an assurance rather than a treaty or binding framework. Krishnan added that India received clarity on the United States’ perspective and its intention to maintain access to technology for “trusted partners” in the future.
What actually happened to Anthropic’s models: On June 12, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security directed Anthropic to suspend access to its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models for all foreign nationals, both within and outside the United States, due to national security concerns. As the company could not reliably verify user nationality, it disabled both models entirely.
Anthropic received the order at 5:21 p.m. ET and stated that the government did not specify the national security concern. The directive applied to individuals outside the US as well as foreign nationals within the US, including Anthropic’s non-US-citizen employees. Anthropic maintained it had no option but to disable the models for all users. The company clarified that access to its less powerful Claude models remained unaffected.
The stated trigger was a reported jailbreak. Officials informed Anthropic that the decision was based on a report of a technique that could bypass Fable 5’s safeguards, which are intended to restrict access to the advanced cybersecurity features of Mythos, the model underlying Fable 5. However, the trigger is disputed. Anthropic described the incident as a narrow misunderstanding and noted that similar behaviour is common in other deployed models. At least one security researcher who reviewed the work rejected the term “jailbreak,” instead describing it as defensive research.
India’s wider concern: The assurance-seeking extended beyond Anthropic. Krishnan addressed the broader issue of supply chain resilience, stating, “If you become over-dependent—and I think that’s what geopolitics and also things like the COVID pandemic have taught us—you don’t become over-reliant on one source of supply. Therefore, you need a multiplicity of at least three or four reliable and trusted sources of supply for a variety of technologies.”
Both sides agreed on the importance of strengthening the global technology ecosystem by diversifying supply chains and minimising reliance on any single region or supplier. On the question of regulation, Krishnan was explicit: “Right now, it is still time for innovation. It’s not yet time to actually look at regulation in the sector—that is a position that India has held.”
The broader friction this exposed: The Mythos suspension was not an isolated incident. This announcement represented Anthropic’s latest conflict with the US government. After negotiations between the two organisations failed, the Department of Defense designated Anthropic as a supply chain risk, a label typically reserved for foreign adversaries. As a result, defense contractors were required to certify that they would not use Claude models in military projects.
Anthropic filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration to challenge the blacklisting, and litigation is ongoing. The company also challenged the US government directive that halted access to its advanced AI models, saying that the “pace of frontier AI advancement is blistering, and competitive ground lost during a suspension cannot be regained after the fact.”
Critics highlighted a contradiction in the administration’s stance: while emphasising the need for the US to lead China in AI, it simultaneously banned Britain and other non-Americans from accessing its top models. Analysts also warned that this directive could prompt many Chinese-born AI researchers in US labs to return to China and might lead investors to question the reliability of American AI companies due to the administration’s unpredictable AI policy.
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