Trump’s humanitarian shutdown has put un-American AI in the spotlight

At the request of Washington Anthropy Suddenly, the latest and most powerful AI models are offline During the weekend. American company He said She had little choice after the White House demanded that she ban the arrival of all foreign nationals, including her employees. Abroad, the incident provided a troubling reminder that not only does the United States dominate frontier AI — its government also has power over who can use it.

The Trump administration’s action was swift and sweeping, imposed without warning or explanation. The unprecedented closure of the channel Myth 5 and Myths 5 Models – which were already subject to Guarantees that limit their use In “high-risk areas” – this has given new force to long-standing arguments against dependence on the United States for critical technologies. It was new ammunition for politicians, governments and companies who already claimed they needed to lead in technology themselves.

in the united kingdom, Artificial Intelligence and Minister of Internet Safety Kanishka Narayan did not mention Anthropic, Donald Trump, or the United States directly, but he used the lockdown to He argues That Britain must develop its own capabilities in the field of artificial intelligence, framing the issue as a matter of national security. “We take every other threat to our sovereignty with deadly seriousness, but we have not learned to treat this threat in the same way,” he said, as images of the British police and army appeared on the screen. Narayan said artificial intelligence was “the central political question of our time”, saying Britain must decide how the technology will shape its economy, security and sovereignty “before someone else decides the answer for us”.

In France, the reaction was more pronounced – and more forceful in naming the United States. Former Prime Minister Gabriel Attal Presidential candidate for the Ennahdha Party led by Emmanuel Macron, Named The lockdown marked the beginning of the “AI war”, and he said it showed France’s weakness if it relied on others for critical technologies. He likened the decline of Anthropic models to Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, where access to artificial intelligence is now a strategic corridor for which France must prepare. Attal is not alone: the world I mentioned Similar alarm from across the political spectrum in France.

The argument is not entirely new. Europe has spent years worrying about its dependence on the United States, both technologically and otherwise, and the EU has done so Increased focus To reduce the region’s dependence on external service providers in areas such as chips, cloud computing and artificial intelligence. But the humanitarian shutdown made things seem more urgent, adding to already deep anxiety about America’s reliability as an ally in the Trump era, from trade disputes to threats to withdraw from NATO. Attal said the issue would be at the heart of France’s next set of presidential elections, while MEPs pointed to the withdrawal of Mythos and Fable as evidence that Europe needs to make tech sovereignty a reality, and do so quickly.

Canada has learned a similar lesson from Europe. Prime Minister Mark Carney He said This situation highlights the dangers of relying on just one partner to access critical resources such as artificial intelligence. “The situation we’re in collectively now with the Mythos and Fable is something that can happen with over-reliance on certain archetypes,” he said. “No one has done anything wrong in this situation. But we will be making a mistake if we accept this, and do not learn the lesson, and do not build and diversify.”

Others are already on this path. Beijing has long supported domestic AI companies, and China is one of the few places with models capable of competing with the products of US frontier AI laboratories. However, in some areas, Chinese models lag behind their American counterparts, and this is the case with Anthropic accused Chinese competitors use their models to train their own models on an “industrial” scale. Part of the White House’s decision to withdraw Mythos It is said It stems from its belief that a group linked to China has accessed the model.

Most governments and companies cannot come close to matching the size and resources of frontier laboratories in the United States or China. But sovereign AI doesn’t always mean building the biggest or most powerful tools. France’s Mistral and Canada’s Kohiri show that hard work can come from outside these countries, even if models can’t stand toe-to-toe. Other countries, e.g Singapore and United Arab Emiratesfocused on narrower but still strategic priorities such as infrastructure, or models that work best with local languages. Of course, there are also open source models that could one day have Legend-like abilities that would be difficult for any single party to control.

Trump may see restricting the Mythos and Fable as a matter of national security. But this debate cuts both ways. With Washington now asking whether AI is so important that not everyone has access to it, other governments are wondering whether they can afford to let Washington decide who does it.

Anthropic may soon bring Mythos and Fable back online. Restoring global confidence in American artificial intelligence is another matter entirely. Regardless of how long the shutdown lasts, it has highlighted how fragile access to frontier AI models in the United States is. Many governments and companies didn’t like what they saw, and are eager to make sure it doesn’t happen again.