Amazon CEO Andy Jassy reportedly raised concerns with US government officials about the cybersecurity risks posed by Anthropic’s AI models before Washington moved to restrict access to them, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
The report said Jassy informed US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and other officials that Amazon researchers had used Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5 model to obtain information that could potentially be used in cyberattacks. Following those discussions, the US government imposed export-control restrictions on Anthropic’s Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models.
Responding to the reports, an Amazon spokesperson said it is “not uncommon for governments to seek our counsel on potential security risks,” but added that the company does not disclose details of such discussions. The spokesperson also pointed to a company update stating that Amazon Web Services (AWS) has itself been affected by the model restrictions.
According to The Information and Reuters, Amazon — one of Anthropic’s largest investors — had communicated concerns about the security implications of the company’s advanced AI models.
David Sacks, former White House AI czar and current co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, also weighed in on the issue. Sacks claimed that “a highly credible trusted partner of both Anthropic and the US government” had identified a jailbreak vulnerability in the model.
Sacks further alleged that the administration had asked Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to either address the vulnerability or withdraw the model, but claimed that Amodei declined to do so.
Anthropic, however, pushed back against the concerns in a blog post, arguing that the capabilities cited by regulators were already available in other publicly accessible AI models.
