Trump’s Anthropic Crackdown Sets Off AI Alarms for US Allies

Article content

(Bloomberg) — With the recent crackdown on Anthropic, the Trump administration has given global leaders another reason to panic about their place in the technology race.

Article content

On Friday, the US ordered Anthropic PBC to deny foreign nationals access to the company’s newest artificial intelligence models. The export ban asserted a broad, unprecedented authority over the technology. 

Article content

Article content

Until then, conversations in Europe about losing access to US tech – sometimes posed as a presidential “kill switch” — were theoretical. To many on the continent, Friday’s move underscored the dire need to find alternatives to American AI, and fast. 

Article content

Article content

France’s Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu announced on Tuesday that the civil service would roll out a tool based on local startup Mistral AI. He added that French company Chapsvision had been selected by the French domestic intelligence agency DGSI to replace US software firm Palantir.

Article content

Article content

“France must have its own tools,” Lecornu said. “We cannot rely on the goodwill of certain partners who, as we have seen in recent days, are capable of cutting off access to the Anthropic model.”

Article content

“We cannot rely on the goodwill of certain partners who, as we have seen in recent days, are capable of cutting off access to the Anthropic model.”

Article content

— Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu 

Article content

US allies — already reeling from the Iran war and Donald Trump’s wavering commitment to NATO — must now confront a future in which the White House can pull the plug on AI sales abroad as it pleases. The US government has previously used similar export control measures to control access to AI chips.

Article content

The leaders of the Group of Seven countries included AI as one of the key points of discussion at the meeting being hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron in Evian, France, which runs through Wednesday. A draft statement seen by Bloomberg said the group would “further discuss emerging opportunities and potential risks arising from AI, notably in the financial sector.”

Article content

Article content

The latest ban, which hits Anthropic’s Mythos and Fable models, affects software that banks, law firms and government offices are rushing to adopt. That decision “materializes a risk that had been on everyone’s mind” outside of the US, said Mathilde Velliet, who focuses on the US tech strategy as a research fellow at the French Institute for Foreign Relations.

Article content

Europe, the Middle East and Canada have struggled to create their own AI companies that are of a similar scale to the US-based frontier models, meaning local companies and governments often choose dominant American products that make them more vulnerable to the Trump administration’s whims. 

Article content

The US export ban “shows how the US government views Europe: as an enemy, not as a friend and ally,” Alexandra Geese, a European parliamentarian from Germany, said in a statement. French presidential candidate for the centrist Renaissance party, Gabriel Attal, declared over the weekend that the “AI war has already begun.” His rival on the far left, Jean-Luc Melenchon said his party “refuses to let France become a digital colony of the US.” Officials in London, Ottawa and Brussels also voiced concerns.