White House asks OpenAI and Anthropic to hold new models back from the UK AI Security Institute until the US reviews them
Partly confirmed
Importance: major (4 of 5)The takeaway
Politico reported on Sept 24, 2026 that the White House Office of the National Cyber Director asked OpenAI and Anthropic not to give new models to the UK’s AI Security Institute for pre-release testing until US agencies had reviewed them.
Status
- Claim
Partly confirmed
- Our reporting
- Medium confidence
- Importance
- Major (4 of 5)
- Last verified
- 12 October 2026
Your AI and this story
- GPT-6 Astra147 days after its cutoff
- Claude Opus 5.586 days after its cutoff
- Gemini 4 Hydrogen177 days after its cutoff
- Grok 4.7116 days after its cutoff
None of these four assistants can know about it. The closest, Claude Opus 5.5, stops 86 days before it.
Key facts
- Request came from the Office of the National Cyber Director (ONCD), the White House cyber-policy office
- Anthropic: Mythos 5.1 is ‘only available to a set of U.S. organizations’; ‘We’re coordinating with the U.S. government to expand access to a broader set of domestic and international partners as quickly as possible’
- OpenAI declined to comment; UK AISI had had pre-release access to GPT-6 Astra (The Next Web)
- Senior administration official (Politico): the US wants its systems secure before sharing with international partners, as these are American companies
- UK government: ‘These risks do not stop at national borders and no country can tackle them alone’
- Update (Oct 11): the Telegraph reported that the administration reversed the request and US labs may again give AISI pre-release access (Reuters); see Telegraph: White House reverses course and lets US labs again give the UK AI Security Institute pre-release access to new models
What happened
The ONCD request, reported by Politico and followed by Bloomberg, asks the two labs to route their newest models through US government review before the UK institute sees them. Anthropic had already limited Mythos 5.1 to US organizations. The UK government answered with a general call for international cooperation. The same week, reports said UK AISI staff were under strain from tight release schedules (FT, Sept 22).
Why it matters
Independent pre-deployment testing by the UK institute was one of the few working international safety mechanisms. Putting a US gate in front of it treats frontier models as national-security assets and weakens the “international testing” pillar that the labs themselves proposed at the UN the same week.
Caveat: based on anonymous sources in Politico; the exact terms of the request and OpenAI’s decision were not public.
Sources
4 sources from 4 sites. Numbers match the chips in the text.
4 sources: 4 press
Press
- Politico: White House asks OpenAI and Anthropic to hold new models from UK testers until U.S. reviewpolitico.com, press
- The Next Web: White House wants US review before UK AI Security Institute teststhenextweb.com, press
- Digital Watch Observatory: US asked OpenAI, Anthropic to hold AI models from UKdig.watch, press
- Reuters via Economic Times: US reverses course on Britain’s testing of AI models (Oct 11)economictimes.indiatimes.com, press
Changes
- Added the reported reversal of Oct 11 (Telegraph via Reuters) and a link to its entry
- Filed