Al's Iron Curtain moment

The US has drawn a new kind of border, not around land but around intelligence itself.

- BY PETER GRIFFIN

The decision to block foreign nationals from accessing Anthropic’s most advanced artificial intelligence models, Mythos and Fable, has triggered outrage in tech circles. It signals that AI regulation is no longer about safety or ethics alone; it is now entangled in geopolitics – and the system governing it is looking seriously dysfunctional.

The US administration now views frontier AI as a strategic asset akin to Nvidia’s AI computer chips, nuclear technology and advanced weapons systems. Under President Donald Trump, access to the most powerful models is a matter of who is “inside” and who is “outside”. If the US considers you a “foreign national”, you’ll miss out.

That shift exposes a growing incoherence in how AI is regulated globally. For the past few years, we’ve been told AI governance should be collaborative, international and values driven. Governments have convened summits, signed accords like the Bletchley Declaration and talked up shared responsibility. Yet when it comes to the crunch, when the most advanced capabilities are on the line, cooperation gives way to control.