Donald Trump’s blocking of Anthropic is capricious and chaotic America’s closest allies are shellshocked June 18th 2026 IN BANNING foreigners from using Mythos 5 and Fable 5, Anthropic’s most powerful models, America’s government may simply have been seeking to punish the firm by the readiest means available. But whatever its intentions, it has demonstrated the difficulty of curbing access to potent technology. The ban has echoes of America’s decision to restrict public-key cryptography, a technology used to secure digital communications, from the 1970s to the 1990s. Back then the government argued that cryptography was akin to a munition; one developer was investigated by the FBI for violating the International Traffic in Arms Regulations. Civil-liberties advocates
eventually prevailed, securing the right to use, sell and export most encryption systems. Encryption was a potent technology, but narrow in its application. AI is far more powerful and versatile. On June 11th Mark Warner, the vice-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that General Joshua Rudd, who leads the National Security Agency and the Pentagon’s Cyber Command, had told him that Mythos “broke into almost all of our classified systems, not in weeks, but in hours”. Advanced AI differs from encryption in another respect, too. Whereas cryptography eventually became widely available abroad, America today enjoys a clear lead in AI. China, hobbled by American chip controls, is probably about a year behind. That advantage could become unassailable if Anthropic or other American labs crack recursive self-improvement (RSI), whereby models write better versions of themselves and thereby accelerate progress. Many insiders think that is possible. A better analogy, then, may be nuclear technology, a comparison that has inspired, fascinated and horrified AI researchers. During the second world war Britain shared its early nuclear-weapons research with America. But in 1946, with the war over and the bomb’s awesome power demonstrated in Japan, Congress passed the McMahon Act, ending co-operation with all foreign countries, including close allies. Co-operation resumed only much later, after Britain had already shown that it could develop its own bomb. America’s allies are reeling again. Many had spent months securing access to Mythos for government agencies, banks and other big firms. Those permissions evaporated overnight. The ban does not even exempt America’s partners in the Five Eyes intelligence alliance: Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand. They are already grappling with the recent lapse of some surveillance powers Congress had failed to renew. Britain’s AI Security Institute, the world’s leading body for testing and jailbreaking new models, is also locked out. Some foreign policymakers see the ban as a wake-up call. “After a lesson this clear every nation will be asking what they need to achieve sovereignty,” says Tom Tugendhat, a former British security minister. But
middle powers are in a tight spot, writes Anton Leicht of the Carnegie Endowment, a think-tank. “Do you think a Trump administration that just refused to give you access to Fable is going to let you buy enough frontier chips to train an unrestricted Fable clone yourself?” Europe, especially, also lacks the processing power to pursue autonomy in AI. Spy agencies are likely to regain access to Mythos, says a former British intelligence official; negotiations are under way. Some observers believe the American government will eventually have to relent for private firms, too. “Allies can perhaps take some comfort in the fact that this is a totally untenable approach to use long term, due to the number of foreigners inside American AI companies,” says Helen Toner of Georgetown University’s Centre for Security and Emerging Technology. “Preventing foreign nationals from accessing the models is essentially equivalent to preventing any company affected from doing any further AI R&D work.” Anyway, restrictions on access often do not work. On the black market, hackers can buy American identities to gain access to AI models, as well as tools to jailbreak them, says Cynthia Kaiser, a former official in the FBI’s cyber division. Anthropic restricts use of its Claude model in China, yet some Chinese users still access it. Mr Trump has pursued a bewildering approach to AI in recent months. He reversed most of the regulations put in place by the previous administration, which he has repeatedly mocked. He later permitted the sale of advanced AI chips to China. In April his hands-off approach to AI safety was called into question when Anthropic produced Mythos Preview, a model the firm judged such a threat to national security that it limited its release to a small group of approved customers. (Allies still have access to that.) On June 2nd Mr Trump issued an executive order calling for a voluntary framework whereby AI labs would give the government access to their latest models before release. The sudden, capricious restrictions on Fable and Mythos are out of step with that approach and a far cry from the consistent, transparent oversight Mr Amodei advocates. In theory the Centre for AI Standards and Innovation, a government body that vets frontier models for dangerous capabilities, could serve as an independent arbiter in such disputes. But the administration
recently instructed it to stop making its reports public (perhaps temporarily). As access to advanced AI becomes a matter of national security, America’s management of it is increasingly opaque. ■ This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//briefing/2026/06/14/donald-trumps-blocking-of-anthropic- is-capricious-and-chaotic
As American cities grapple with homelessness, one offers a fix Republicans are desperate to move on from the Iran war Populist president, meet socialist mayor Political manoeuvres are delaying a spy law and new intelligence chief Pet-custody laws in America are changing Scammers are preying on America’s illegal immigrants The left is coming for Democratic incumbents
As American cities grapple with homelessness, one offers a fix Denver’s answer to a stubborn problem June 18th 2026 DENVER’s mayor is Mike Johnston, with a “t”. Its unofficial “mayor of the streets” is Mike Johnson, with a teardrop tattoo and a soft voice—your correspondent can barely hear him over a karaoke performance of a Guns N’ Roses song in the cafeteria of one of Denver’s new homeless shelters. For years, Mr Johnson’s life was a haze of pills, heroin and street living. Now he spends his days helping Denverites like him find shelter or a place to detox. That is easier than it used to be: Denver’s tent camps have largely disappeared. Homelessness in America declined by 3% between 2024 and 2025, yet the number of people without a home is still 31% higher than it was before the
covid-19 pandemic. Since 2020 tents have proliferated, particularly in warm western and southern cities where people can camp year-round. This is a problem—for the homeless people who lack shelter, for locals who feel their cities have been overtaken by encampments, and for Democrats, who run many big cities and whom Donald Trump blames for urban chaos. Early evidence suggests Denver, led by Mr Johnston, a Democrat, may offer a solution. In recent years policies on homelessness have swung between extremes. Officials struggled to balance compassion for society’s most vulnerable— many of whom suffer from mental illness or drug addiction—with the concerns of residents and businesses tired of tiptoeing around faeces and needles. Inaction led to a political reckoning in cities such as San Francisco, where the mayor in charge while homelessness and public drug use ballooned was ousted by a moderate reformer. A growing number of cities are offering a blunt solution. In 2024 the Supreme Court ruled in Grants Pass v Johnson that it was not cruel and unusual to punish homeless people for sleeping outside when they have nowhere else to go. More than 300 municipalities have since enacted camping restrictions, an approach with its own challenges. Business owners may be happier, but camping bans too often shift the homeless into hiding, hospitals and jails.
Denver has had a camping ban on the books for years, but saw its unsheltered population surge nonetheless. In 2023, when Mr Johnston took office, nearly 1,500 people were living on the streets, a large number for a city with fewer than 730,000 residents. “People are moving out of blue cities that don’t solve this problem,” the mayor explains. So he declared a state of emergency over homelessness. Since then the number of people living outside has fallen by 64%. For several years overall homelessness continued to creep up (see chart) with some people sheltered but not permanently housed. Yet Denver recently turned a corner there, too. The city’s total number of homeless fell by roughly 12% between 2025 and 2026. Like many ambitious policies, Denver’s plan has depended on targeted investment and relentless focus. First, the city used funds from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), Joe Biden’s pandemic stimulus bill, to buy and lease new shelters. Roughly half of the $158m the mayor’s office reported spending on its initiative came from the federal government. New hotels and tiny-home communities added roughly 1,000 shelter units. Chester Burney has been living at the Aspen, a converted hotel, for 16 months. “After my wife died, I spiralled,” he recalls. “It’s nice to have somewhere you can try to get back on track.” Crucially, the programme includes not just housing but support. Each floor has “care co-ordinators”
who help “guests” get new IDs, food stamps and housing. Mr Burney now works at a burger restaurant and is planning to move into his own place in August. At another project, Elati Village, tiny homes were built in a city car park for $25,000 apiece. The usual NIMBY concerns may have been eased by a preference for neat cottages over camps. “This entire block was encamped,” says Cole Chandler, the head of Denver’s Department of Housing Stability. He’s staring at a post office where a tent city, home to more than 100 people, used to be. Now, the streets are clean. Rockies and Cubs fans amble towards the ballpark for an afternoon baseball game. The new shelters allowed officials to bring entire encampments inside at once. In many cities homeless people sometimes decline shelter because they can’t bring their pets or belongings. So Denver allowed that. Once the city cleared tents from an area, it closed that part of downtown to camping. Mr Johnson, the mayor of the streets, now attends a call each morning where officials discuss reports of new camps and plan their outreach. If someone erects a tent “you might be there for a day, if you’re lucky,” says Ana Miller, an advocate for homeless Denverites. Ms Miller laments this change. Yet the mayor (both mayors, in fact) might consider her testimony proof that the plan is working.