EU tech chief says Europe not security risk

EU Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy Henna Virkkunen said on social media on June 15, "Europe represents an economic opportunity, not a security risk. We are and will remain a trusted partner. This is why we need to cooperate on emerging, powerful AI models. This is a shared global challenge," Xinhua reported. The remarks followed Anthropic's announcement that the US Department of Commerce had issued an export control directive requiring it to suspend all access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 by any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States, including foreign national Anthropic employees, per Anthropic's official statement. The net effect was that Anthropic had to disable both models for all customers to ensure compliance, per the same statement.

Anthropic received the directive on June 12 at 5:21pm ET. The letter did not provide specific details of the national security concern, per Anthropic's statement. Anthropic's understanding is that the government had become aware of a method of bypassing, or "jailbreaking," Fable 5. Anthropic reviewed the technique and concluded that the level of capability displayed was widely available from other publicly available models and used every day by security defenders. Anthropic publicly stated it disagreed with the finding, saying that if such a standard were applied across the industry, "it would essentially halt all new model deployments for all frontier model providers," per Anthropic's statement.

The European Commission said on June 15 that it was assessing the practical impact on European users and cautioned that measures to address risks from advanced AI should not be discriminatory against partners, Xinhua reported. Virkkunen said the episode "underlines the need for Europe's technological sovereignty" and urged the swift adoption of a package of measures presented earlier in June, which include procurement preferences for European firms in sensitive public cloud and AI contracts, per AFP reporting. The measures would become law only after negotiation with the European Parliament and member states. The EU sources more than 80 percent of its digital products, services, infrastructure and intellectual property from outside the bloc, per AFP reporting.

This is the first publicly confirmed instance of a US government export control directive forcing a frontier AI provider to remove commercial model access globally. The action directly affected EU users and researchers who had been using Fable 5 and Mythos 5. Earlier in June, Anthropic had separately agreed to give the EU's cybersecurity agency ENISA access to the Mythos model - a step that sits in tension with the subsequent suspension. Industry observers note that the directive creates uncertainty for any European institution or enterprise that had adopted Anthropic's frontier models as part of their workflows, compounding existing EU concerns about digital dependence on non-European providers.

Observers should track whether the US government provides technical details backing the directive; whether Anthropic succeeds in restoring access; how quickly the European Parliament moves on Virkkunen's proposed procurement measures; and whether other frontier model providers face comparable orders. Outcomes on any of these axes will materially affect model procurement, vendor risk planning, and compliance requirements for organizations operating across jurisdictions.