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

Anthropic’s decision to suspend all foreign nationals, including Anthropic’s own employees who do not have US citizenship, from access to its most powerful artificial intelligence models, prominently used for coding, drew a myriad of reactions from Indian entrepreneurs and social media users.

Citing national security concerns, the US government issued an export control directive to suspend all access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 to any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States, including foreign employees of the Anthropic Organization. Both models were revealed just five days ago.

Zoho’s ex-CEO reacts

Former Zoho Corp CEO Sridhar Vembu reacted strongly to the news. Vembu described the development as “huge” and claimed it highlighted the growing importance of technology in global power dynamics.

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

He went on to say that “National sovereignty, national security, it’s all about technology now,” suggesting that countries will increasingly see access to state-of-the-art AI tools as a matter of strategic and geopolitical importance.

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“Globalization is dead”

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

The restrictions, he said, showed that “globalization is dead and Bharat has to find its own way forward”.

Vembu called on the Indian government to call for a policy response to encourage organizations to adopt smaller AI models instead of relying heavily on foreign systems.

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Specifically, he recommended exploring “both Indian and Chinese open source”, noting that such models could be adapted to local needs.

Vembu expressed confidence in alternative AI systems, saying, “With a little effort, we can make them work.”

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

How did social media users react?

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

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

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

Read also | Anthropic is taking the latest AI models offline to comply with new export controls

There were also concerns about censorship. One user X said: “And the government’s censorship of AI models is starting, just as I warned. Anthropic’s Fable 5 is now basically outlawed because even Anthropic can’t guarantee the nationality of user accounts. The US government is starting their mass censorship of AI models. They’ll be banning China-based open source models before long. Take my word for it.”

The anthropic answer?

The firm said none of its security testers had found a “universal jailbreak” or a way around its security against helping hackers.

“We disagree that the discovery of a narrow potential jailbreak should be reason to withdraw a commercial model deployed to hundreds of millions of people,” the company said.

“If this standard were applied across the industry, we believe it would essentially stop all new model introductions for all frontier model providers.”

Antropic has been embroiled in a legal dispute with the Trump administration over its refusal to allow the potential use of its technology for mass surveillance and autonomous weapons, leading the Pentagon to cancel contracts with the company.