# OpenAI, Anthropic and the 'security review' with no policy behind it

> The White House quietly asked OpenAI and Anthropic to make the UK's AI testers wait their turn.

*One office nobody's heard of. Two anonymous officials. A UK testing body with more funding and more staff than its American counterpart — told to wait its turn anyway. Call it what it is.*

By Bez · InsidersFeed
Canonical: https://insidersfeed.com/news/openai-anthropic-security-review-uk-ai-security-institute

Here's the take: this is not a security review. A security review is a documented process with criteria, a decision record and someone accountable for the call. What Politico's Sophia Cai and Joseph Bambridge reported on 24 September is an anonymous request from an office most people couldn't name, relayed to two companies who then have to decide whether defying the White House is worth the fight. Call it leverage. It's leverage.

## The receipts

The Office of the National Cyber Director asked OpenAI and Anthropic not to hand new frontier models to the UK's AI Security Institute (AISI) until the US government has tested them first. A senior administration official gave Politico exactly one sentence of justification:

> Because they're American companies and this has been our policy with every new frontier model that comes out,
> — [Politico](https://www.politico.com/news/2026/09/24/white-house-asks-openai-and-anthropic-to-hold-new-models-from-uk-testers-until-u-s-review-01091769), 2026-09-24

'This has been our policy' is doing enormous work for a sentence with nothing behind it. No memo. No cyber directive with a number on it. No line in the June executive order on pre-deployment testing, which was voluntary by design and explicitly avoided a licensing regime. If this genuinely has 'been the policy' all along, it is the first anyone has heard of it stated as such — and it surfaced the same week Prime Minister Andy Burnham was in New York arguing the opposite case to world leaders.

## Anthropic didn't even make them ask twice

Compare this to how Anthropic handled the Pentagon in February — Dario Amodei refused unrestricted military use of Claude, Trump ordered every federal agency off Anthropic's products by Truth Social post, and the company fought it in court and won a preliminary injunction. That is a company willing to take a punch for a principle.

Then look at what actually happened with AISI. Claude Mythos 5.1 launched on 1 September, restricted to US organisations, and Anthropic said on its own page it was still working to expand access — no fight, no statement to the UK press, no comment when Politico or Bloomberg called. The pattern across 2026 is consistent: Anthropic contests restrictions that hit its own commercial and safety-mission autonomy, and goes along quietly with restrictions that only cost an ally its seat at the table.

| Date | What happened to Anthropic | How Anthropic responded |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 27 Feb 2026 | Trump orders federal agencies to stop using Anthropic after it refuses the Pentagon's terms | Sued; won a preliminary injunction on 26 March (the Pentagon's own blacklist was upheld on appeal on 25 September) |
| 12 Jun 2026 | Commerce blocks foreign nationals from Mythos 5 and Fable 5 | Disabled both for all customers, called it a misunderstanding and objected; restrictions lifted 30 June |
| 1 Sep 2026 | Mythos 5.1 launches, still US-only | No public objection |
| 24 Sep 2026 | White House extends the ask to cover AISI too | Declined to comment; appears to have gone along, Politico reported |

> only available to a set of US organizations, though we're coordinating with the US government to expand access to a broader set of domestic and international partners as quickly as possible.
> — [Anthropic](https://www.anthropic.com/claude-fable-and-mythos-5-1), 2026-09-01

## 'Nothing has changed' is not what the letter says

AISI's public reassurance is doing a version of the same trick. Director Henry de Zoete told a parliamentary committee on 15 September that the institute maintains 'strong relationships with all frontier AI developers and continues to have prerelease access to some of the world's most capable models' — true, and also the same letter in which he confirms the institute did not receive Mythos 5.1. A UK government spokesperson went further, telling Politico that 'these risks do not stop at national borders and no country can tackle them alone'. Correct, and also not an answer to the actual complaint, which is about sequencing, not about whether risk is global.

> **Note:** Watch the gap between AISI's public line and AISI's own paper trail. The letter that says 'nothing has fundamentally changed' is the same letter that discloses the thing that changed. That is not dishonesty exactly — it is an institution managing its own credibility in front of a select committee that was already circling before Washington's move made headlines.

## The resourcing point nobody's making loudly enough

If this were genuinely about capability — about which body can be trusted to test a frontier model competently — the sequencing would run the other way. AISI reports £66m in annual funding, priority access to more than £1.5bn of compute and over 100 technical staff. Politico reported, almost as an aside, that the Commerce Department's Center for AI Standards and Innovation — the body the White House is now insisting goes first — has no permanent director and only a few dozen technical staff, and is already straining to evaluate an expanding stream of releases. Britain isn't being asked to defer to a better-equipped tester. It's being asked to defer to the flag on the building.

MPs on the Business and Trade Committee had already worked this out. Chair Liam Byrne summoned OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind and Meta to a hearing on 13 October — before this story broke — over exactly the access gap Mythos 5.1 exposed, telling the companies that 'voluntary self-regulation is unlikely to be a sustainable safeguard for the future'. De Zoete gives evidence the same day. He will have to explain, in person, the difference between 'prerelease access to some of the world's most capable models' and prerelease access to all of them — a distinction the White House has now made explicit policy on the American side, whatever it's called on the record.

## Key takeaways

- This is a policy position relayed by an anonymous White House office to two companies — not a law, an order or a published directive. That distinction is doing a lot of work in every reassuring statement issued since.
- Anthropic appears to have gone along already, Politico reported: Claude Mythos 5.1 launched on 1 September restricted to US organisations, and the company declined to comment.
- AISI's 'nothing has changed' line sits inside the same letter where its own director admits the institute didn't get Mythos 5.1. Read the whole letter, not the soundbite.
- AISI is better resourced than the US body Washington is now asking it to defer to: £66m a year, 100-plus staff and priority compute access, against a US counterpart with no permanent director and 'a few dozen' staff, per Politico.
- UK MPs were already pressing the voluntary-testing question before this story broke, summoning OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind and Meta to a 13 October hearing over exactly this kind of access gap.

## FAQ

### Is this a new US law or policy?
No. It's a request from the White House's Office of the National Cyber Director, sourced by Politico to two anonymous officials. There is no published directive, statute or executive order behind it.

### Did Anthropic fight the request, like it fought the Pentagon?
No. Anthropic declined to comment and kept Claude Mythos 5.1 restricted to US organisations without public objection — a different pattern from its court fight over Pentagon access earlier in 2026.

### Is AISI really 'fine', as the UK government says?
Its access to some models is intact, per its own director — but the same letter confirms it didn't get Mythos 5.1. The reassurance and the admission are in the same document.

### Is the US testing body actually better equipped than the UK's?
No, on the numbers available. AISI reports £66m a year, 100-plus staff and priority compute access; Politico reported the US Center for AI Standards and Innovation has no permanent director and only a few dozen staff.

### What should I watch next?
The 13 October Commons hearing, where OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, Meta and AISI's own director face MPs already sceptical of voluntary access — and whether the next big US model reaches AISI on the same schedule as its US counterpart.

## Sources

- [White House asks OpenAI and Anthropic to hold new models from UK testers until US review](https://www.politico.com/news/2026/09/24/white-house-asks-openai-and-anthropic-to-hold-new-models-from-uk-testers-until-u-s-review-01091769) — Politico, 2026-09-24
- [Trump Tells OpenAI, Anthropic to Withhold Models From UK Agency](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-25/trump-tells-openai-anthropic-to-withhold-models-from-uk-agency) — Bloomberg, 2026-09-25
- [Donald Trump tells OpenAI, Anthropic to withhold models from UK agency](https://www.business-standard.com/world-news/donald-trump-tells-openai-anthropic-to-withhold-models-from-uk-agency-126092501029_1.html) — Business Standard (Bloomberg), 2026-09-25
- [Introducing Claude Fable 5.1 and Claude Mythos 5.1](https://www.anthropic.com/claude-fable-and-mythos-5-1) — Anthropic, 2026-09-01
- [About the AI Security Institute](https://www.aisi.gov.uk/about) — AI Security Institute, 2026-09-26
- [OpenAI and Anthropic summoned to parliament on fears UK AI rules 'not fit for future'](https://www.cityam.com/openai-and-anthropic-summoned-to-parliament-on-fears-uk-ai-rules-not-fit-for-future/) — City AM, 2026-09-22
- [OpenAI and Anthropic could withhold new AI models from UK's AI Security Institute](https://www.itpro.com/security/openai-and-anthropic-snub-uks-ai-security-institute-on-new-model-testing) — IT Pro, 2026-09-25
- [Trump orders federal agencies to stop using Anthropic as dispute escalates](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/27/trump-orders-federal-agencies-to-stop-using-anthropic-as-dispute-escalates) — Al Jazeera, 2026-02-27
- [Judge temporarily blocks Trump administration's Anthropic ban](https://www.npr.org/2026/03/26/nx-s1-5762971/judge-temporarily-blocks-anthropic-ban) — NPR, 2026-03-26
- [Anthropic disables Fable and Mythos AI models after U.S. government bars it from giving foreigners access](https://fortune.com/2026/06/13/anthropic-disables-fable-mythos-export-controls-national-security-threat/) — Fortune, 2026-06-13
- [Federal appeals court rules Pentagon's blacklist of Anthropic was legal](https://www.cnn.com/2026/09/25/tech/anthropic-pentagon-blacklist-dc-ruling) — CNN, 2026-09-25