"As customs experts, we don't get involved in the AI thing." — Oh Really.

This week, AI became a controlled item. You now have to declare a position.

Last night, Anthropic suspended access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 following a government directive from Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to CEO Dario Amodei on 1 June. This appears to be the first time the US government has issued a directive suspending access to specific named AI models. A reported jailbreak of Mythos prompted the administration to act on national security grounds. The order covers all foreign nationals, including Anthropic’s own employees.

DeepSeek and Qwen (Excellent CN Models) face no equivalent restriction. Companies in countries locked out of Fable and Mythos can access Chinese frontier models without a licence requirement.

India is the pressure point. India ranks among Anthropic’s largest user bases outside the US, and India-US trade negotiations are live. Access to frontier US AI models is now a variable in those talks.

Trade compliance teams now have a seat at the AI strategy table. The question of which models your organisation can use, where, and with whom is no longer a procurement decision. It is a regulatory one.