A few days ago, on this very channel, I commented on the strategic risk of not having an LLM model developed by us (by the EU). In that brief note (titled “We Did It with Gas”) I argued that frontier AI is not simple consumer software; it is critical infrastructure of the highest order, and the problem was that we did not have it.
Well, the risks flagged in that brief reflection a few days ago have ceased to be a future warning: Today Anthropic has announced that, pursuant to an order received from the U.S. Government, its models “Mythos 5” and “Fable 5” (made available to us just three days ago — and which, frankly, left me astonished) are no longer available (well, no longer available to “some”). They cite national security reasons (the restriction applies only to “non-American” citizens). In my view, this decision by Anthropic — whether or not it originates in government orders — has turned a hypothesis into a fait accompli. I think we are, as they say colloquially, “toast”:
Until today we lived in the comfortable fiction that the digital ecosystem was global, flat and neutral. It seemed that a credit card was enough to delegate corporate efficiency or the automation of a public service to a model hosted on the other side of the ocean. But the most advanced AI does not float in an abstract cloud. It depends on gigawatts of energy, on millions of highly specialised chips concentrated in U.S. territory and, ultimately, on Washington’s national security decisions. By unilaterally restricting access to “Mythos 5” and “Fable 5”, Anthropic has shown that frontier technology is governed by the same geopolitical dynamics as oil or semiconductors: when a resource is vital and scarce, globalisation ends and borders reassert themselves.
The problem of not owning this infrastructure — of the EU not having its own AI model — is not that our companies lose an assistant for drafting emails or summarising texts. The real impact is the loss of autonomous operational capacity. If the models capable of processing, reasoning and structuring tomorrow’s economy are off-limits to us on geographic grounds, the productivity gap will not be a competitive distance; it will be an unbridgeable abyss. It will be impossible to compete with those who have access to the most important infrastructure of the 21st century. Can anyone seriously contemplate building a business model that relies entirely on an “agentic” AI model that may no longer be made available tomorrow? We talk about making the technological leap, about not fearing the revolution that AI represents, about using it to automate tasks and processes, about delegating raw knowledge to it and focusing on ambiguity (and as a new paradigm I accept that) — but what if, after all that effort, we receive a notice saying: “Sorry, not for you, even if you can pay”? Do we go back to what we had before? To the operational Stone Age?
Integrating into the core of society a frontier technology whose key you do not hold is, quite simply, outsourcing the intellectual and operational sovereignty of your country (in this case, of the entire EU). It is also, without question, the fastest route to losing the competitiveness race: we will never be as productive or competitive as companies that do have access to this infrastructure.
The EU continues to lead in organising committees and regulatory frameworks (and do not misunderstand me: I deeply believe these frameworks are essential and absolutely necessary) while the owners of the data centres and the leading AI laboratories decide, in a matter of minutes, which countries, citizens or entities have a right to the vanguard and which are frozen at yesterday’s standard.
The warning is no longer theoretical. The lights of tomorrow’s infrastructure have been switched off for the rest of the world, and the switch remains far from our hands. There is much talk of AI’s multiple existential risks (the famous p-doom); but even if all of them are set aside, and AI proves to be the tool to achieve absolute well-being and abundance — watch out, because we may simply not be given the access password.