Europe Raises Alarm Over U.S. AI at G7 and VivaTech

Reuters reports that Europe's push for technological sovereignty is dominating discussions at the G7 summit in Evian and the VivaTech conference in Paris this week. The gatherings follow a U.S. directive, issued Friday June 13, that banned foreign nationals from using Anthropic's Fable 5 and Mythos 5 AI models, cutting off European access to two state-of-the-art models on national security grounds, per Euronews. Anthropic had initially restricted the models to a select group to assess their potential for cyber-related misuse before the broader directive was issued.

European Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier told Euronews: "We believe that contingency measures taken in this light should not be discriminatory against partners." Regnier added that the Commission is "looking closely at the practical consequences of this for European users." The episode, per Euronews, is being used by Commission officials to argue that existing EU cybersecurity and AI laws allow the bloc to manage emerging risks on its own terms, reinforcing the case for reducing dependence on non-EU providers. French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu was quoted by Reuters: "We cannot rely on tools developed by foreign powers. France must have its own tools."

Reuters quoted Ana Paula Assis, senior vice president at IBM: "Tech sovereignty will be top of mind this week at VivaTech." Reuters reported that Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei joined G7 leaders for a working lunch on Wednesday alongside executives from other leading AI companies. European AI startups such as Mistral are pursuing regional partnerships, though per Reuters they continue to rely on U.S.-based infrastructure and components. VivaTech expects over 180,000 visitors, per Reuters.

ML engineering and compliance teams in Europe relying on Anthropic's frontier models should assess contingency arrangements: the Fable 5/Mythos 5 restriction demonstrated that access to top-tier U.S. AI models can be revoked for non-U.S. users by executive directive with little notice. Monitoring EU Commission and G7 communiques for concrete funding or procurement commitments - rather than aspirational sovereignty statements - will indicate whether the policy discussion translates into actionable alternatives.