Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney warned Sunday that U.S. restrictions on Anthropic's AI models expose risks of relying on few American providers. Speaking in Ireland ahead of the G7 summit in France, Carney responded to a Friday government order forcing Anthropic to disable its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models worldwide on national security grounds. Carney stated the situation demonstrates what can happen with overreliance on certain models, urging governments and businesses to diversify AI infrastructure rather than accept dependence on a single option.
US Government Orders Anthropic to Disable Frontier AI Models Globally
A Friday directive ordered Anthropic to cut access to its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models for any foreign national inside or outside the United States on national security grounds, the Associated Press reported. Anthropic promptly complied, disabling both systems for all customers. The company disputed the basis, however, arguing the cited jailbreak is already replicable on public models like OpenAI's GPT-5.5.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick reportedly sent the letter to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, per Axios. The decision was reportedly driven in part by suspicion that a China-linked group had accessed Mythos, Semafor reported. The restrictions come as Anthropic nears a $1 trillion valuation following annualized revenue of over $47 billion.
Carney said nobody has "done anything wrong in the situation," but warned the mistake would be to "just accept this, don't take the lesson, don't build out and diversify." The prime minister added, "It is never a good idea to have one option."
Decentralized AI Tokens Rally Following Anthropic Restrictions
Projects tied to decentralized AI rallied following the ban on Anthropic's models, with the sector's market cap at $24.3 billion, up 6% on the day and 12% over the week, per data from CoinGecko. Smaller compute and data networks led the way, with ChainOpera AI, io.net, Grass, and NOVA among those climbing more than 30% over the past week. NEAR Protocol and Bittensor, two of the sector's largest tokens by market cap, rose 15.9% and 27.9% on the week respectively.
Experts Highlight Centralized AI Systemic Risks and Decentralization Limits
The U.S. government's move on Anthropic points to "a risk that is largely unique to centralized AI," Dan Dadybayo, strategy lead at Horizontal Systems, told Decrypt. Backing Carney's warning, Dadybayo said reliance on a few U.S. providers "creates genuine systemic risk, similar to what we saw in finance in 2008."
Centralized AI keeps a model and its controls inside one company. Decentralized AI spreads those functions across independent operators coordinated by a blockchain. Distributing models across independent nodes removes the single "kill switch," but the risk persists if the compute behind them stays concentrated among a few suppliers, Dadybayo explained.
Peter Anthony, founder and CEO of Perceptron Network, told Decrypt that "rising compute and data costs" drive concentration trends. Anthropic's situation "didn't create that problem, it just made it impossible to look away from," he added. While Anthony agreed with Carney's point that the order marked a "strategic vulnerability," he questioned whether decentralization solves it or "just pushes the chokepoint back one layer to GPU suppliers." If decentralized AI still runs on chips owned by a few cloud giants, "you've rebranded the risk, not removed it," he added.
FAQ
What did the US government order Anthropic to do on Friday?
A Friday directive ordered Anthropic to cut access to its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models for any foreign national inside or outside the United States on national security grounds. Anthropic promptly complied, disabling both systems for all customers.
Why did Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney warn about AI diversification?
Carney warned Sunday that the U.S. restrictions on Anthropic's models expose the risk of relying on a handful of American AI providers. Speaking in Ireland ahead of the G7 summit in France, Carney stated the situation demonstrates what can happen with overreliance on certain models and urged diversification of AI infrastructure.
How did decentralized AI tokens perform following the Anthropic restrictions?
Projects tied to decentralized AI rallied, with the sector's market cap reaching $24.3 billion, up 6% on the day and 12% over the week, per CoinGecko data. ChainOpera AI, io.net, Grass, and NOVA climbed more than 30% over the past week, while NEAR Protocol rose 15.9% and Bittensor rose 27.9% on the week.
