Bloomberg reported on June 17 that it obtained a copy of U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s letter sent last Friday to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. In the letter, Lutnick demands that Anthropic submit individual license applications to the Department of Commerce on a case-by-case basis before exporting, re-exporting, or transferring within the U.S. the Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models to any foreign national, anywhere, or to any destination. Lutnick cited U.S. law that allows the government to impose export controls on civilian technologies that could be used by rival nations’ militaries for intelligence purposes, but did not specify the specific justification for imposing these restrictions in the letter. This letter prompted Anthropic to suspend all access to the two models on Friday evening. An Anthropic spokesperson revealed that the company’s representatives have since held virtual meetings with U.S. officials, and that technical staff met directly with Commerce Department officials on Monday. A Commerce Department spokesperson declined to comment to Bloomberg.