The U.S. government has granted Anthropic permission to restore access to its powerful Claude Mythos 5 artificial intelligence model for a select group of American organizations, offering a partial rollback of sweeping export controls imposed two weeks ago amid national security concerns over potential misuse by foreign adversaries.

The decision allows more than 100 companies and institutions, including many Fortune 500 firms, to once again use the model, which is particularly noted for its advanced capabilities in identifying software vulnerabilities. The move was confirmed by a source familiar with the directive, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of ongoing discussions between the company and officials in Washington.

“Today, the government notified us that Mythos 5, our strongest cybersecurity model, can be redeployed to a set of US organizations that operate and defend critical infrastructure,” Anthropic said in a statement on Friday. “We’re restoring access for these organizations quickly, and we’re continuing to work with the government to expand access to Mythos 5 and make Fable 5 available for general use again.”

The partial reversal comes after Anthropic had disabled both Mythos 5 and Fable 5 for all users following a Commerce Department export control order on June 12. That directive had cited risks that the models could be exploited by military or intelligence entities in countries of concern, including China and Russia.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s letter to Anthropic highlighted “significant progress” in collaborative efforts to mitigate those risks. Under the updated guidance, no export license is now required for Mythos 5 when provided to approved U.S. organizations and their non-U.S. citizen employees, nor for Anthropic’s own non-U.S. staff. Licensing restrictions, however, remain in place for any entities not included on the approved list.

Many of the newly authorized organizations are participants in Anthropic’s Project Glasswing, a cybersecurity initiative involving around 100 prominent tech companies and institutions.

A Fragile Truce in the AI Oversight Battle

This development represents a tentative truce in what has been a notably strained relationship between Anthropic and the Trump administration. The company had been placed on a national security blacklist earlier this year after refusing to allow its technology to be used for mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons. The recent export controls added to the friction, but Friday’s partial lifting suggests negotiations are yielding incremental progress.

The episode underscores the delicate balancing act facing both AI developers and policymakers in Washington. On one side are legitimate worries about powerful vulnerability-discovery tools falling into adversarial hands and accelerating cyberattacks on critical infrastructure. On the other hand, there is the risk that overly restrictive measures could slow American innovation and hand an advantage to international competitors.

OpenAI faced a similar situation earlier on Friday, announcing it would delay the full public launch of its GPT-5.6 models at the government’s request and initially limit access to a small group of vetted partners. Both companies have voiced unease about government vetting becoming a long-term norm.

“We don’t believe this kind of government access process should become the long-term default,” OpenAI said in its statement. “It keeps the best tools from users, developers, enterprises, cyber defenders, and global partners who need them.”

Critics have been vocal about the lack of transparency in how the government selects which organizations gain access.

“No one knows how these companies are picked and why everyone else is excluded,” said John Coleman, legislative counsel for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. “This is putting too much power in the hands of the government. There’s little transparency and it raises questions about the rule of law.”

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman echoed these sentiments on X.

“Extensive safety testing is not a bad idea. I just don’t like the idea of the government picking the customers,” he wrote.

Experts have warned that models like Mythos, if misused, could dramatically speed up the discovery and exploitation of vulnerabilities in complex systems, particularly in sectors like banking that rely on legacy infrastructure. A letter from Lutnick noted that an export license will no longer be needed for Mythos 5 to trusted companies and their employees who are not U.S. citizens, but restrictions will persist for non-approved entities.

Tackling the National Security Concerns

The government’s actions follow President Donald Trump’s executive order earlier this month, which established a voluntary framework for AI developers to submit “covered frontier models” for up to 30 days of government review before releasing them to trusted partners. Kate Koren, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former Commerce Department official, described the latest directive as “a practical interim step, but leaves unresolved the larger issue of how companies can widely release updated models.”

“The longer there isn’t a system in place that will allow U.S. companies to widely release new models, the more likely it is that China will be able to catch up,” she warned.

The situation with both Anthropic and OpenAI underpins that national security considerations are increasingly shaping the pace and direction of AI development in the United States. As frontier models grow more capable, the tension between rapid innovation and precautionary oversight is only likely to intensify.

Analysts note that the partial restoration of access to Mythos 5 provides some breathing room for Anthropic, allowing it to support critical infrastructure defenders while it works toward broader availability. The company’s plans to go public add another dimension, as greater transparency and regulatory engagement will become even more important.

However, the events of the past few weeks suggest a pragmatic, evolving approach is taking shape — but fundamental questions remain about how sustainable this framework will be as AI capabilities continue to advance. In an industry where the line between breakthrough and risk is increasingly blurred, both companies and regulators are navigating uncharted territory.

The United States has widened its restrictions on Chinese telecommunications and surveillance equipment, expanding an existing import ban to cover older generations of products from some of China’s biggest technology companies.

The move comes just weeks after the summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping produced a series of agreements aimed at stabilizing bilateral ties, raising fresh concerns that the latest action could reignite tensions between the world’s two largest economies.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced on Friday that it will extend its 2022 ban on Chinese telecommunications and video surveillance equipment to include older models manufactured by Huawei, ZTE, Hytera Communications, Hikvision, and Dahua Technology. The expanded restrictions will take effect in early July.

Unlike the original order, which applied only to products designed after late 2022, the new rules close what regulators viewed as a significant loophole by prohibiting imports of legacy equipment intended for use in public safety systems, government facilities, physical security at critical infrastructure, and other applications involving U.S. national security.

The FCC said the action “is necessary to protect national security by mitigating risks to the U.S. communications sector.” The agency stressed that Americans will still be permitted to use equipment they already own. The order targets future imports rather than requiring existing systems to be removed.

The latest restrictions represent another step in Washington’s steadily expanding campaign to reduce the presence of Chinese technology in critical sectors. Over the past year, the FCC has also prohibited imports of all new Chinese-made drone models and banned new Chinese consumer routers from entering the U.S. market, citing similar security concerns.

Beyond hardware, the commission is considering additional measures that would prohibit U.S. telecommunications carriers from interconnecting with Chinese telecom operators, a move that could effectively prevent Chinese telecommunications firms from operating data centers and communications services in the United States.

The decision comes at a delicate diplomatic moment.

Only weeks ago, Trump and Xi met in a summit that both governments portrayed as an effort to reset relations after years of escalating technology restrictions, tariffs, and export controls. The meeting resulted in several understandings aimed at easing bilateral tensions, including commitments to improve economic dialogue, reduce trade frictions, and maintain communication on sensitive technology and supply-chain issues.

The summit also reinforced recent efforts by both countries to prevent further deterioration in relations after months of reciprocal restrictions involving semiconductors, artificial intelligence technologies, rare earth minerals, and advanced manufacturing.

The FCC’s latest action now risks undermining some of that progress.

Although the measure is framed as a national security decision rather than a trade policy initiative, analysts say Beijing is unlikely to view the distinction as meaningful. Chinese officials have consistently argued that Washington increasingly invokes national security as a justification for broader economic and technological containment.

Several analysts expect China to respond with additional countermeasures rather than allowing the latest restrictions to pass unanswered.

Those responses could include tighter export controls on strategically important materials, expanded restrictions on American technology firms operating in China, or additional limitations on U.S. access to Chinese supply chains for critical minerals and advanced manufacturing inputs.

Such retaliation would be consistent with Beijing’s recent strategy. Earlier this month, China imposed export controls and procurement restrictions on dozens of U.S. companies after Washington added more Chinese firms to the Pentagon’s list of companies allegedly linked to China’s military. Rather than escalating aggressively, Beijing opted for targeted measures designed to signal its willingness to respond while keeping broader economic relations relatively stable.

The latest FCC decision may now test whether that calibrated approach continues. Industry observers note that while Huawei, ZTE, and the other affected companies already face significant restrictions in the United States, expanding the ban to older equipment removes remaining avenues for supplying certain public-sector and infrastructure projects.

The move also reflects a broader evolution in U.S. technology policy. Washington is no longer focusing solely on preventing the adoption of next-generation Chinese technologies. Instead, regulators are systematically tightening oversight of legacy equipment already embedded in global supply chains, seeking to eliminate alternative procurement channels that could weaken earlier restrictions.

For the Trump administration, the policy aligns with a wider strategy of strengthening domestic communications security and reducing reliance on Chinese technology across critical infrastructure. Similar initiatives have targeted semiconductors, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, drones, routers, and telecommunications equipment.

China has repeatedly rejected U.S. allegations that its companies pose security threats, accusing Washington of politicizing trade and using national security as a pretext to suppress Chinese technological development. Neither the Chinese Embassy in Washington nor the affected companies immediately commented on the FCC’s latest decision.

Elon Musk is pursuing the acquisition of Mesh Optical Technologies, a young optical networking startup founded by three former SpaceX engineers, in a move that would deepen SpaceX’s push into artificial intelligence infrastructure and high-performance data center technology.

The potential deal, disclosed in a filing with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and first reported by Bloomberg, comes as SpaceX rapidly expands beyond rockets and satellite internet into AI computing infrastructure, an area that has become one of the fastest-growing segments of the technology industry.

The FTC filing also revealed that regulators granted an expedited antitrust review, suggesting authorities do not currently view the transaction as raising significant competition concerns.

Mesh Optical emerged from stealth mode in February when it announced a $50 million Series A funding round led by Thrive Capital.

The company was founded in 2025 by former SpaceX engineers Travis Brashears, Cameron Ramos, and Serena Grown-Haeberli, who previously helped develop the laser-based optical communication system that allows thousands of Starlink satellites to exchange data directly in orbit.

Those optical inter-satellite links have become one of Starlink’s defining technological advantages, enabling satellites to transmit information across the constellation without relying entirely on ground stations, improving speed, resilience, and global coverage.

The founders have since adapted that expertise to terrestrial data centers, developing optical transceivers designed to replace conventional electrical networking hardware.

The technology addresses a growing challenge confronting AI infrastructure. As artificial intelligence models become larger and more computationally demanding, moving data efficiently between thousands of graphics processing units (GPUs) has become nearly as important as the chips themselves.

Traditional electrical connections increasingly struggle with bandwidth limitations, power consumption and heat generation at the scale required by modern AI clusters.

Mesh Optical’s light-based networking hardware is designed to overcome those constraints by enabling faster, lower-latency, and more energy-efficient communication between servers.

Industry analysts see optical networking as one of the next major growth areas in AI infrastructure, alongside advanced semiconductors, memory chips, and high-bandwidth networking equipment.

The proposed acquisition highlights SpaceX’s transformation into a diversified technology company. Although best known for its Falcon rockets, Starship program, and Starlink satellite internet business, SpaceX has been investing aggressively in AI infrastructure as demand for computing capacity surges.

The company has recently entered into agreements to provide data center compute capacity to leading artificial intelligence developers, including Anthropic, Google, and open-source AI company Reflection AI.

Those partnerships have created a significant new revenue stream following SpaceX’s recent public listing, helping diversify income beyond launch services and satellite communications.

Integrating Mesh Optical’s technology could allow SpaceX to improve the performance and efficiency of those AI data centers by reducing power consumption while increasing data transfer speeds between AI processors.

The acquisition would also fit Elon Musk’s broader strategy of controlling critical components across his companies’ technology stack. Rather than relying entirely on third-party suppliers, SpaceX has historically preferred to develop or acquire strategic technologies internally, ranging from rocket engines and satellite hardware to software systems.

Optical networking could become another vertically integrated capability supporting both terrestrial AI facilities and future space-based computing infrastructure.

While SpaceX’s current AI data centers are Earth-based, the company’s long-term ambitions extend far beyond conventional facilities. As Starlink continues to grow and Starship advances toward commercial operations, efficient optical communications could eventually play an important role in supporting distributed computing infrastructure in orbit or on future lunar and Martian missions.

The proposed deal also underpins the intense competition among technology companies to secure every layer of the AI infrastructure ecosystem. Global spending on AI infrastructure has accelerated dramatically as companies race to build larger data centers capable of supporting increasingly sophisticated AI models. Beyond processors supplied by companies such as Nvidia, demand has surged for networking equipment, advanced memory, power systems, and optical communications technologies that enable AI clusters to operate efficiently.

By acquiring Mesh Optical, SpaceX is expected to gain access to specialized engineering talent and proprietary optical networking technology developed by engineers already familiar with the company’s engineering culture and long-term objectives.

The acquisition, at completion, is expected to further strengthen SpaceX’s position in the rapidly expanding AI infrastructure market while bolstering its strategy of building integrated technology platforms spanning aerospace, satellite communications, and artificial intelligence.