The day a US order pulled the world's most advanced AI offline — and Iran and America agreed to end their war

World News 5 min 80 sources

Washington told Anthropic to block foreign access to its top models; the company switched them off for everyone, and allies from Ottawa to Brussels are asking what it means to depend on a tool another government can turn off. Meanwhile the US and Iran reached a deal to end their war, with a signing set for Friday.

Key takeaways

A single US order forced Anthropic to switch off its top AI models worldwide, and allies from Canada to the EU are now openly questioning the cost of depending on tools another government controls.
The US and Iran agreed to end their war, with a signing set for Friday: Iran reopens the Strait of Hormuz and freezes its nuclear work, the US lifts sanctions and frees $25 billion in assets, and oil prices fell more than 4%.
Beneath both stories sits the same scarcity — control of advanced chips and the rare earths that build them — now pulling officials as far as the Greenland coast.

The switch nobody knew Washington held

On Friday the United States ordered Anthropic, the San Francisco company behind the Claude chatbot, to cut off all access to its two most advanced AI models — named Fable 5 and Mythos 5 — for any foreign national, anywhere, inside or outside the country [79]. Rather than run a system that sorts users by passport, Anthropic switched the models off for everyone, including its own non-American staff [63][79].

The order came less than a week after the models launched [79]. The US cited national security. According to the US outlet Semafor, the trigger was a worry that a China-linked group had reached the new model, and a warning that it could be “jailbroken” — tricked past its safety limits — which the government says Anthropic failed to fix [79]. Anthropic said it was given only “verbal evidence” and no detail [79]. This is the same company already suing the administration after being placed on a supply-chain blacklist for refusing to let the US military use its models for domestic surveillance and autonomous weapons [79]. Senior Anthropic staff are now in Washington trying to resolve the standoff [48].

What changed is not one product. It is a demonstration. A single government directive reached across borders and turned off a tool that companies, researchers and governments in dozens of countries had quietly built into their work. The off-switch existed the whole time. Friday was the first time the world watched it get used.

Why the rest of the world flinched

The loudest reaction came from allies, not rivals. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said the restrictions “underscore the risks of dependence” and argued that middle-power countries should not compete with each other for Washington’s favour [44]. The European Commission said on Sunday it is assessing the practical fallout and that any US export controls “should not be discriminatory” against partners [63]. Brussels added a careful line: these new models bring real benefits, including for cyber-defence, but also raise security concerns that have to be addressed [63].

The deeper context is a race. China’s AI firms — DeepSeek among them — have closed much of the gap at a fraction of the cost [79], and Beijing controls most of the world’s rare earths, the metals the whole AI hardware chain runs on [79]. Washington’s instinct is to wall off its lead. The unintended message to everyone outside the wall: a capability you rent from another country is a capability that country can revoke. That is the thread to watch. Every government now weighing whether to build on American AI, or to fund its own, just received a live example of what the dependent option costs on a bad day.

America and Iran agree to end their war

Early Monday, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announced that the United States and Iran had reached a deal to end their war, with an official signing set for Friday in Switzerland [19]. “The Deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran is now complete,” Trump wrote shortly after [19].

A senior Iranian official described the draft to Reuters [28]. Iran reopens the Strait of Hormuz — the narrow sea lane that carries a large share of the world’s oil — to all commercial ships, and the US lifts its naval blockade of Iranian ports [28]. The US waives oil sanctions for a set period, lets Iran sell oil again, and releases about $25 billion of frozen Iranian assets [28]. In return, Iran agrees not to build or acquire nuclear weapons and to freeze its nuclear work — no new enrichment, no expansion — until a final deal is reached over the following 60 days [28].

Markets answered fast. The dollar slid to a 10-day low, and Brent crude fell more than 4% to about $83.82 a barrel as the threat to oil shipping eased [2]. But the calm is conditional. Trump told the New York Times that if Iran fails to reach a final nuclear accord, he would restart attacks, or make the US “the guardian of the Middle East” in exchange for 20% of the region’s oil revenue [2]. And the deal was struck the same weekend Israel struck Hezbollah targets in Beirut’s suburbs — a strike both Iran and Trump criticised, and a reminder that the people who signed the deal do not control everyone who can break it [19][3].

Quieter, still moving

Switzerland says no. Swiss voters rejected a proposal to cap the country’s population at 10 million by 2050, with about 54% against [57]. A “yes” would have collided with the EU’s free-movement rules — and 60% of Swiss goods are sold to the EU [57]. One German lawmaker called it a vote “for reliability, openness, and the continuation of the bilateral path” [57].

Ebola spreads in Congo. The Democratic Republic of Congo confirmed 782 Ebola cases — 72 in a single day, one of the biggest jumps yet — including 181 deaths [47]. It is the country’s 17th outbreak, still held to three eastern provinces, but it reached two new health zones for the first time [47].

Greenland, again. Japan plans to send a delegation to Greenland this summer to evaluate mining its rare earths [55]. The Arctic island — an autonomous part of Denmark that Trump floated acquiring in January — keeps drawing visitors who want the metals that power phones, wind turbines and, yes, AI chips [55]. The same scarcity driving the AI fight is pulling officials toward the Arctic.

The story nobody’s covering

Scientists are warning that the Atlantic’s main heat-carrying current — the system that gives Europe its mild climate — could weaken far faster than models assumed, with one estimate putting the change at ten times the expected speed [50]. The catch: the monitoring array that would give early warning is itself at risk of losing funding [50]. Three oceanographers writing in the Guardian compare it to spotting an asteroid and then cutting the budget that tracks it [50]. It is the kind of slow, structural risk that rarely leads a news day — until the day it does.

02 · Lesson · why it matters

The off-switch you forgot you handed over

Every tool you depend on comes with a hand on its switch. When the hand isn't yours, you've borrowed a power that can be taken back — and you rarely notice until the day it is.

A capability that was never quite yours

For a week, companies and researchers in dozens of countries built work around two new AI models. Then a single government order reached across borders, and the company that made them switched them off — for everyone, in an afternoon. Nothing was hacked. No server failed. The tool simply stopped, because the people who controlled it were told to stop it.

This is the thing worth seeing. The users hadn’t lost a tool they owned. They’d lost access to a tool they rented — and they’d been treating rented access as if it were the same as owning. It almost always feels the same, right up until the moment it doesn’t.

Renting feels like owning, until it stops

When you use something every day and it never fails, the line between renting and owning quietly disappears. The streaming service that holds your films. The cloud that holds your photos. The phone that needs the maker’s servers to keep working. The supplier your whole business runs on. Day to day, you can’t feel the difference between “this is mine” and “I am permitted to use this.”

The difference is invisible because it only shows up at the edges — in a policy change, a price hike, a court order, a falling-out between two governments you’ve never met. The dependence is real the whole time. You just can’t see it while the switch stays on.

The leverage you give away for free

Here’s the part that’s easy to miss: depending on something doesn’t just expose you to its failure. It hands quiet power to whoever controls it.

Watch how the AI story actually moved. The US didn’t have to persuade dozens of countries of anything. It issued one directive to one company, and the company did the rest, because the company holds the switch. Everyone downstream — researchers, firms, even allied governments — found their options narrowed by a decision made in a room they weren’t in. That’s what dependence is, stripped to its mechanism: you’ve agreed in advance to live with choices other people get to make.

This is why Canada’s prime minister reacted not with anger at a rival but with a warning about dependence itself. He wasn’t pointing at one order. He was pointing at the position — the position of needing something badly enough that the supplier’s bad day becomes your bad day.

The trade that makes it worth it

None of this means dependence is a mistake. It’s usually a bargain, and often a good one. Building your own version of a thing — your own AI, your own chip supply, your own energy — is slow and brutally expensive. Renting the best version from someone who’s already built it is faster and cheaper, every single day that nothing goes wrong.

That’s the real shape of it: a steady saving you collect constantly, paid for with a rare, sharp loss you can’t schedule. Most days the bargain pays. The error isn’t taking it. The error is taking it without noticing you took it — counting the daily saving and quietly assuming the loss will never come.

Everyone is downstream of something

It’s tempting to read this as a story about governments and tech firms, a contest happening above your head. It isn’t only that. The same shape runs straight through an ordinary life.

The job that is your only income. The platform a small business depends on for customers. The single supplier with no backup. The friend or service or institution that holds something you’d struggle to replace. Each is a switch in someone else’s hand. None of this means cut every cord — most can’t be cut, and most shouldn’t be. It means knowing where your switches are, who holds them, and what it would cost you the day a hand you don’t control decides to flip one.

The people scrambling this weekend weren’t reckless. They were dependent — like the rest of us, on more things than we usually count. Seeing the whole here doesn’t make you safe from it. It makes you a little more honest about how much of what you rely on is held, finally, by someone other than you.

03 · Lab · your turn

Where Your Switches Are

Rehearse choosing which tools to rent for the daily saving and which to own for the bad day, then feel one switch get flipped by a hand you don't control.