The White House's emergency order to pull Anthropic's Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models has thrown the company into turmoil. According to the New York Times, leaked internal chat logs show panic among the 3,000-person workforce as management scrambled to comply with a 90-minute takedown deadline. Employees now fear that this sudden technical ban will completely derail the company's planned IPO later this year.
In the leaked messages, staff express confusion over the White House's shifting justifications, which oscillate between "national security" and "security vulnerabilities." One engineer asked sardonically whether they were being "bullied on a whim" by the administration. Another employee gloomily speculated that the government doesn't "want Anthropic to exist."
This anxiety stems from Anthropic's long-standing political pressure in Washington. Earlier this year, the company clashed with the Pentagon over its refusal to allow AI to directly engage in military operations. The Secretary of Defense subsequently labeled Anthropic a "supply chain risk," making it the first US company to be tagged as a national security risk. The forced removal of its models at such a crucial IPO juncture has only deepened internal concerns about political persecution.