---
title: "The vertical part"
date: "2026-06-14"
summary: "On Friday the government reached into Anthropic and switched off its two best models. Eleven years ago I tried to picture the vertical part of the curve — this is what it looks like from inside"
tags: ["ai", "fable", "regulation", "acceleration"]
---

On Friday the United States government reached into Anthropic and switched off two models — Fable 5 and Mythos 5 — for everyone on earth who isn't American. Export control. National security. Someone had found a way to jailbreak one of them, and that was enough.

I'd been using Fable. It was the sharpest thing I have ever pointed at a problem — the first model that genuinely made me feel slow. On Friday it was simply gone. A blank where a mind had been. Anthropic disabled it for all of us within hours to comply, and said, more or less, that recalling a model used by hundreds of millions over one narrow flaw was madness. They're right. It happened anyway.

Eleven years ago I read a blog post with a curve in it and tried to picture the place where the line goes vertical. I pictured something smooth. It isn't. From inside, the vertical part is all lurches — a model that makes you gasp, then a government that yanks it off the shelf overnight, then another, faster, the floor tilting and not stopping.

This is the tell, more than any benchmark. We are building things now powerful enough that states reach in and flip the switch. That isn't a story about a product. It's a story about where on the curve we are standing.

I can't see six months ahead anymore. For the first time, I've stopped needing to. Maybe that's just what the vertical part feels like from inside it.