News of the Cyber World

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ANTHROPIC

Trump’s Ban On Foreign Access To New Anthropic Models Sparks Tech Backlash

President Donald Trump’s attempt to prohibit foreign nations from using the latest iterations of the U.S. firm Anthropic's artificial intelligence models has drawn a sharp reaction from across the tech space, with many considering the ban unworkable and others warning the measure will impede the country's efforts to compete with China in the AI race.

On Friday, the California-based company revealed that an “export control directive” had been issued for its Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models, preventing their use “by any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States, including foreign national Anthropic employees.”

Though limited details were provided by the government, Anthropic said it believed the directive was due to a potential vulnerability, specifically a method of “jailbreaking” Fable 5. Jailbreaking refers to bypassing software restrictions—such as an AI’s safety guardrails—that are designed to protect a system or network.
The company said it had investigated the issue and found it exposed only a handful of previously known weaknesses that other publicly available models can also discover, whilst acknowledging that watertight jailbreak protection is likely “not currently possible for any model provider.”

As a result of the order, the company said it had to suspend all access to both models in order to comply, apologized to its customers for the “disruption,” and said it believed this stemmed from a “misunderstanding” on the part of the government.

Newsweek has contacted Anthropic and the Commerce Department via email for comment.

Reactions From The Tech Sector

“We disagree that the finding of a narrow potential jailbreak should be cause for recalling a commercial model deployed to hundreds of millions of people,” Anthropic said in the statement posted Friday. “If this standard was applied across the industry, we believe it would essentially halt all new model deployments for all frontier model providers.”

Both in the U.S. and abroad, much of the criticism from leading tech figures has likewise been directed at the U.S. government, while highlighting the difficulty and consequences of imposing export controls on a technology like AI.

Dean Ball, former White House AI adviser

In a series of posts on X, Ball, one of the authors of the Trump administrations “AI Action Plan,” called it “baffling” that the U.S. would attempt to restrict foreign access to Anthropic models.

“An administration whose posture is that we *should* export advanced AI chips to China, which also wants to ban… Britain (and every other non-American on Earth)… from using our best models?” he wrote on Saturday.

“I can’t tell if this is lawfare against Anthropic in particular or extreme national-security hawkery. Regardless, it is simply cartoonish,” he said in a separate post.

PREVIOUSLY...

Two months since the social media ban began and teens say it isn't working

It has been almost two months since Australia's world-first social media ban for under-16s came into effect, and for Adyan, 14, life has not changed too much.

"I thought the ban would be, like, way more strict, but it ended up being really, like, chill, like, nothing happened," he said.

"It's completely useless."

In the days leading up to the ban, Snapchat prompted Adyan to complete a face scan to confirm he was over 16. The 14-year-old obliged and was granted access.

"Snapchat thought I was over 16, so my Snapchat account did not get banned and same on my TikTok, but Instagram, I needed to show my driver's licence because it wasn't letting me use my face."

Adyan said that while his Instagram account was initially banned, this was only a small hurdle.

"It wasn't letting me use my face, so I got my friend's driver's license, and then I used it, and then it worked, so now I have all social media."

The ABC spoke with teenagers across the country. Most of them had not been banned. Those who had found ways around it.

"I didn't get any warning on anything. When I first made my social media accounts, I had already set my birthday before the year I was born. So I was born in 2010, I think I had set it to like 2007," said Evie, a 15-year-old from Adelaide.

Alby, 14, also never received a warning. Instead, he has seen the ban spawn a new wave of entrepreneurs.

"Now there's sort of like a market for it of younger people under the age of 16 giving money to their friends or people they know that are older to do ID scans for them, or your parents doing it for you. So it's really easy to get around.

"I personally haven't even gotten, like, a message saying, 'You're banned' or had to do any ID scans. I'm still on it, but my friends that have, they've all got around it."

Anabell, who is 15 and turning 16 in February, said she was part of a small minority who were actually booted off social media.

"Ten per cent probably got banned, and most of them were people my age that didn't really need to get banned and have birthdays coming up.

"I was angry because I knew a lot of people who didn't get banned that should have gotten banned.

"I was watching people my sister's age, like only 13, still have social media while I was banned."

Adyan agrees with Anabell's estimate.

"Probably around 10 per cent of them actually have been banned, and half of that 10 per cent has been unbanned by just using basically the same thing that I did: use other people's faces, use their driver's licence.

"Now, really, none of my friends are banned. Everyone has social media."

So, who's actually been banned?

Before December 10, more than 2.3 million Australians between eight and 15 used at least one social media platform.

According to data from the eSafety commissioner, within that cohort, there were more than 850,000 Snapchat users and more than 700,000 Instagram accounts.

Last month, the federal government said the social media ban was "working", citing that more than 4.7 million under-16 accounts had been either deactivated or removed since the ban came into effect.

ELON MUSK & PROTESTS

German State Media Accuses Elon Musk, Tommy Robinson of Inciting Belfast Rioters to ‘Hunt’ Migrants

German state media has accused Tesla trillionaire Elon Musk and anti-grooming gang activist Tommy Robinson of calling for the “hunting” of migrants in the wake of an alleged asylum seeker beheading attempt in Belfast.

Tuesday’s edition of German public broadcaster ZDF flagship programme ‘Today Live’ argued that the backlash to footage of a Sudanese asylum seeker allegedly attempting to cut a man’s head off in Northern Ireland earlier this month was a result of malign actors from abroad on social media, signalling out Elon Musk and Tommy Robinson in particular.

Introducing the segment, presenter Christina v. Ungern-Sternberg said: “A brutal attempted murder on a public street in Belfast. Someone films it; the video goes viral. A racist mob subsequently hunts down migrants. Calls for this had come from a British right-wing extremist and tech billionaire Elon Musk. The pattern isn’t new.”

Not only did the German public broadcaster fail to provide any evidence that either Musk or Robinson had called for the violent targeting of migrants, as was seen in some cases during the Belfast riots, ZDF also appeared to undermine their entire argument with the posts they cited as evidence of incietment.

Indeed, in one of the only posts highlighted by the broadcaster, veteran street organiser Tommy Robinson said: “The whole of the United Kingdom is hitting the streets tonight at 7pm following yet another invader attack on our people.”

This post was accompanied with a list of various protests, which featured the call for people to remain: “Peaceful. Respectful. Together.”

The post was shared by Musk, who added: “Only by protesting REPEATEDLY and LOUDLY will there be any change!!”

There does not appear to be any evidence that either men called for violence of any kind in response to the brutal attack in Belfast. Nevertheless, the half-hour ZDF programme was nearly all dedicated to the supposed negative influence played by Musk and Robinson.

The German broadcaster brought on Ciarán O’Connor of the Soros-backed  Institute for Strategic Dialogue as an expert on the matter. O’Connor said that Musk has taken an increasing interest in spreading anti-immigration content over the past five years, saying that he uses his large platform on X to boost local stories to the international level.

While not directly accusing Musk of calling for hunting down migrants as the ZDF presenter did, the ISD commentator noted that social media was used to spread addresses of properties linked to migrants or to asylum seeker accommodation for the purpose of targeting certain groups.

“We see the same pattern, the same playbook, time and again: tragic incidents occur, or tensions flare up over crime, and social media platforms are used in real-time to call on people to protest or simply to take action. And there is also a clear call for violence and an encouragement of violent reactions,” he said.

Far Leftists Torch Tesla, Smash Shop Windows, Clash With Cops at G7 Summit in Geneva

Far-left activists plunged Geneva into chaos on Sunday, clashing with police, setting fires, and vandalising businesses to protest against President Donald Trump’s meeting with the G7 nations on Monday.

As leaders of the world’s leading economies are set to hold a summit in Évian, France, leftist agitators used the opportunity to riot across the border in nearby Geneva.

The protest was forced to be held 50 kilometres from the actual summit, as the French government barred demonstrations on its territory against the G7.

According to authorities, an estimated 50,000 protesters were expected in the Swiss city, while 7,000 police officers were deployed in a bid to prevent the unrest that has come to define the lestist response to G7 meetings.

The Swiss German-language daily Blick reported that around 5 pm local time, the protest took a violent turn, which saw a Tesla car set on fire and burnt to a crisp, while a nearby bank had its shop windows smashed in with hammers.

The paper reported that demonstrators also clashed with police, with rioters using iron bars, bicycles, and wooden sticks to assault officers.

Blick further reported that some agitators broke into a construction site, which they raided to use building materials and construction tools as makeshift weapons and missiles against the police.

In turn, police deployed tear gas and water cannons against the protesters to quell some of the most violent members of the demonstration.

G7 meetings have frequently been targeted by violent anti-capitalist protests, including in the 2001 summit in Genoa, which saw around 100 police officers injured during riots and a young protester, Carlo Giuliani, 23, shot and killed by police.