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What Anthropic’s Forced Shutdown Means for European Sovereignty (pixelunion.eu)

submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by streetfestival@lemmy.ca to c/canada@lemmy.ca

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Imagine a lead developer in Berlin or a security researcher in Paris ending their Thursday with the most sophisticated coding partner ever built, only to wake up on Friday, June 12, 2026, to a 403 Forbidden error. This was no routine maintenance window or technical glitch; it was a geopolitical foreclosure. Overnight, Anthropic’s “Mythos-class” models, the revolutionary Claude Fable 5 and its internal progenitor, Mythos 5, were silenced across Europe by a direct order from the U.S. government. At PixelUnion, we have long been a voorvechter (advocate) for European technical autonomy, and we view this blackout as the ultimate “canary in the coal mine.” It is a brutal reminder that when you plug into someone else’s power grid, the owner can cut the current without warning.

Let's buy some more F-35s and deepen our tech dependence on US companies! 🥴 (/s). What a @#$ing waste of money and massive risk that US will brick or seize things bought from US

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[-] festus@lemmy.ca 4 points 3 months ago

Well right now the model is entirely turned off, but it seems the US government wants Anthropic (and I guess as a result AWS) to first verify that you have US citizenship before they'll enable it on your account. It's not just blocking on where your IP is located; non-US citizens living in the United States are supposed to be denied access. So in your scenario, AWS wouldn't enable Fable on your account until I guess you show them your passport or something. Though I think even that won't be enough; what if the AWS account is for an America company and later they have a non-US citizen employee? I'm not sure AWS Bedrock can support this use-case.

[-] jdnewmil@lemmy.ca 6 points 3 months ago

This is just a practice run shot across the bow for requiring that only individuals who have sworn allegiance to Der Fuhrer are given access.

[-] adespoton@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 months ago

OK, how does this work in practice? Let’s say you’re a US citizen working for a multinational corporation and you use AWS Bedrock in your pipeline. The output of that pipeline is consumed by customers all over the world. The AWS account is paid for by your company.

Because the company is multinational, are you denied access? Or because you’re a verified US citizen, do you have access? But that access means that other coworkers who also have Bedrock access also need to have the same models as you, or they won’t be able to do code review, QA, and the rest — AND the model might be exposed to customers if they figure out a jailbreak.

[-] festus@lemmy.ca 3 points 3 months ago

Yeah, that's why I think AWS can't support this situation. If the US doesn't drop their order, I think the only way Anthropic could commercialize these models would be if they disallowed any API usage and tied authentication to developer-specific accounts. So your employer might pay for every eligible employee to have an account, and Anthropic validates their citizenship, but there's no using Fable for automated code review or QA or whatever; all use must be restricted and tied to specific authorized humans. That completely rules out AWS.

[-] adespoton@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 months ago

It’s also not going to work in practice. Only the people you’re fine with having access will abide by the terms.

[-] Auli@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 months ago

Need a verified government ID to use it.

[-] vovin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 3 months ago

Yeah there may be some legal kerfuffle. But I want to point to the crypto example. MIT Kerberos fell under that restriction and Heimdall was created almost immediately. You can't ultimately restrict software, non physical, easily copiable items. This is just going to blow over.

And what about non US employees of companies working abroad? How will they prevent companies from allowing this?