After Anthropic blocks access to Mythos, Fable 5, Zoho’s Sridhar Vembu says ‘Bharat must find its own way ahead’

Anthropic’s decision to suspend access to its most powerful AI models, prominently used for coding, for all foreign nationals, including Anthropic’s own employees who do not hold US citizenship, has evoked a myriad of responses from Indian entrepreneurs and social media users.

The US government, citing national security concerns, has issued an export control directive to suspend all access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 by any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States, including foreign-national Anthropic employees. The two models were unveiled only five days ago.

Ex-Zoho CEO reacts

Former Zoho Corp CEO Sridhar Vembu reacted strongly to reports. Describing the development as ‘big’, Vembu argued that it highlighted the growing importance of technology in global power dynamics.

In a post on social media, Vembu wrote that restricting access to Anthropic’s AI models was proof that “Technology is the ultimate weapon”.

He went on to say that “National sovereignty, national security, all of it is now about technology”, suggesting that countries would increasingly treat access to cutting-edge AI tools as a matter of strategic and geopolitical importance.

‘Globalisation is dead’

Vembu also used the episode to make a broader point about the future of technology and international cooperation.

According to him, the restrictions showed that “Globalisation is dead and Bharat must find her own way ahead”.

Calling for a policy response, Vembu urged the Indian government to encourage organisations to adopt smaller AI models instead of relying heavily on foreign systems.

He specifically recommended exploring “both Indian and Chinese open source ones”, arguing that such models could be adapted to meet local needs.

Expressing confidence in alternative AI systems, Vembu said, “With a bit of effort, we can make them work.”

He concluded with a pointed remark aimed at companies restricting access to their technologies: “Anyway, why pay money to people who don’t even want to sell to you?”

How did social media users react?

One X user said, “this is like 9/11 for techbros.”

Another said, “I can’t help but think this is because Anthropic is in the lead, about to IPO, and the current administration can’t stand them.”

A third wrote, “No killer robots for the Pentagon. US gov: Then no model for anyone. Gold medal in mutual pettiness. Nobody wins.”

Concerns about censorship also surfaced. One X user said, “And the government censorship of AI models begins, just like I warned. Anthropic’s Fable 5 is now essentially outlawed, since even Anthropic cannot guarantee the nationality of user accounts. This is the US government beginning its effort of mass censorship of AI models. Before long, they will ban China-based open source models, too. Mark my words.”

Anthropic’s response?

The firm said that none of its security testers had found a “universal jailbreak”, or a way to bypass its safeguards against helping hackers.

“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,” the company said.

“If this standard was applied across the industry, we believe it would essentially halt all new model deployments for all frontier model providers.”

Anthropic has been locked in a legal standoff with the Trump administration over its refusal to allow its technology to potentially be used for mass surveillance and autonomous weapons, leading the Pentagon to cut contracts with the company.