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For those of you enjoying your summer unaware of Anthropic’s latest feud with the US government, here’s a recap: In April the company said it had built an AI model called Mythos that was so good at working with code it could pose a global cybersecurity threat. Anthropic gave access to a small group of cybersecurity experts so they could see what they were up against. Then it released a modified version called Fable which it said was safer to the public on Tuesday, June 9. That Friday, the federal government told the company it was a threat to national security and placed export controls on the new release. Anthropic revoked access to both models hours later.

People worried about catastrophic effects of AI—broadly labeled “doomers”—have said for years that the technology poses a threat to humanity and published proposals for how the government should intervene in its development. The doomers just got their government intervention—not over a bioweapon or rogue AI, but in response to an AI model that’s basically just really good at coding. And the result so far looks less like a safety plan than like a superficial reaction.

There’s plenty to dissect about what happened in those few days that led to such drastic action from the government, and it’s notable that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy was the one who told government officials that Fable would be dangerous (Amazon is both invested in Anthropic and building its own competing AI models). It’s also possible this will be a short-lived ban from the government that doesn’t survive legal scrutiny (it’s not clear that Anthropic’s offering access to Fable really counts as “exporting” it, for example). 

But there are ripple effects happening already. 

For one, this is making a whole lot of people not want to rely on American AI companies. TheFrench politician Bruno Retailleau described it as a “wake-up call” that should motivate Europe to build more AI. But any vision of turning Paris into Silicon Valley—touted by many other European leaders following the shutdown of Anthropic’s models—is complicated by one big thing: China. 

Open-source models from China are very capable and incredibly cheap, and they can be downloaded to run on anyone’s servers with no rules or guardrails. (This makes them attractive to companies that don’t want access turned off on the basis of a decision from the White House—but equally attractive to cybercriminals, the type that Anthropic hoped to fend off by building safety guardrails into its models.) 

It’s possible that companies, including those in the US and Europe, will decide that working with Chinese models is just easier, as the skyrocketing of shares in the Chinese startup Zhipu suggests. Playing this forward, is it possible the government’s next drastic decision will be to say that US companies using models from China pose a threat to national security? I wouldn’t write it off. 

Second, it’s possible that shutting off access to Anthropic’s models will leave the country morevulnerable to cybersecurity attacks, not less. Leading cybersecurity experts have said as much in an open letter to the government, writing that access to Anthropic’s models was helping researchers prepare defenses, and that the company’s models are no more dangerous than other leading models that are widely available. Such is the risk of applying the concept of nonproliferation to software—trying to control and restrict dangerous AI models in the manner of the uranium used for nuclear weapons. 

The third thing worth watching is how US lawmakers will react. Remember that following Anthropic’s last feud with the government over how the Pentagon could or could not use its models, a slate of new bills was introduced that would define the limits of military AI.

Right now, the biggest players shaping how AI gets used are the companies and the White House. There’s been much talk about more federal AI regulation, and polling suggests most Americans want it. Lawmakers are still figuring out whether to form rules on how kids use chatbots and are far from a clear answer on the extent to which the government should vet the safety of AI models. But with every drastic action from the White House, the pressure for regulations rises.

To state the obvious, predictions are hard when the administration’s attitudes toward AI  change with the wind. When President Trump took office, he threw out the restrictive rulebook for how to make AI safe and promised to get out of the way of tech companies. The White House has now called the most valuable AI startup a risk to national security once in the spring, and again in summer. What will fall bring?

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here.

When I landed in Seoul after a grueling 12-hour flight from San Francisco, I walked through an unmanned immigration checkpoint, where a machine scanned my face and passport. On the subway home, people were glued to their phones (powered by flawless 5G even underground), as we raced past platforms lined with LED screens of ads celebrating K-pop idols’ birthdays. When I got off the station in Gangnam, a cartoon-eyed robot on wheels was waiting patiently at a crosswalk to deliver someone’s dinner. Internet cafés dotted the sidewalks, crammed with teenagers playing computer games, maybe hoping to become the next legendary pro gamer.

I stood at a bus stop with interactive touch screens showing real-time bus schedule updates. It will soon become an “AI bus stop,” the Gangnam district announced in June, with a kiosk that answers riders’ questions in multiple languages. The news didn’t surprise me. Having grown up in the city, I’ve watched Seoul transform from a scrappy boomtown into the gleaming tech capital it is today.

South Korea loves AI.

While a public backlash against AI is brewing across the US, South Koreans are optimistic. Only 16% say they are more concerned than excited about AI—the lowest of any of the 25 countries surveyed by the Pew Research Center—while 50% of Americans were more worried than excited. A majority of Koreans use AI every day, either as a sort of personal assistant or to do tasks at work, according to surveys by the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism and Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

One of the most wired countries in the world, South Korea loves to street-test every new technology on the block—AI webcomics, virtual K-pop idols, and humanoid monks. And the appetite for experimentation doesn’t stop with ordinary citizens. Government agencies are early adopters too, deploying AI textbooks in schools and AI eldercare robots in welfare centers. South Koreans share a deep conviction that embracing technology is integral to modernizing the country and cementing its place in the global order. Their fascination with AI is just the latest incarnation of that ethos—and it’s making them anxious to stay ahead.

Engineered enthusiasm

All this techno-optimism has largely been engineered by South Korea’s national agenda to make AI a motor of economic growth. “The South Korean government has designated an AI-powered Fourth Industrial Revolution as the country’s path forward and aggressively promoted and invested in it,” says Chihyung Jeon, a professor of science and technology policy at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. “South Koreans have consistently and relentlessly been told by the government about AI’s potential to create a better future.”

As South Korea rose from the ashes of the Korean War, technology lifted the nation from poverty into an economic powerhouse. In the 1970s, South Korea manufactured steel and ships, then semiconductors in the 1980s, broadband in the 1990s, and smartphones in the 2000s. Today, Samsung and SK Hynix supply most of the world’s high-bandwidth memory chips, which power the cutting-edge Nvidia hardware used to train AI models. South Korea’s economy now orbits these two semiconductor giants: The country’s main equity index, Kospi, surged to record highs in 2026, powered by the soaring share prices of both companies, each valued above $1 trillion.

Lee Jae-myung, president of South Korea, has pledged to vault the country into the ranks of the “top three AI powers” alongside the US and China. After taking office in 2025, he launched the Presidential Council on National AI Strategy to help buy massive amounts of computing power and a sovereign AI foundation model project that funds Korean companies to develop homegrown AI models. The government has also supported semiconductor titans, including Samsung and SK Hynix, through generous tax credits and low-interest financing. 

South Korea’s policy posture also prioritizes accelerating AI development over safety considerations. In 2024, South Korea’s legislature passed the AI Basic Act, one of the world’s first comprehensive AI laws, to promote AI development and establish light-touch regulatory guardrails. Seventy percent of South Koreans say advancing science and medicine through AI innovation is a bigger priority than protecting industries through regulation, according to the 2026 Stanford AI Index.

All of that effort might be paying off. The same index ranked South Korea as having the third largest number of notable AI models in the world, based on criteria such as state-of-the-art advancements or high citation rates. For many small countries like South Korea, AI is a chance to punch above their weight.

The blind spots

But that single-mindedness can crowd out critical reflection on AI’s broader societal impacts. “Because the national agenda on AI prioritizes economic development,” says Jeon, the professor of science and technology policy, “there isn’t much reflection on the social, political, ethical dimensions of the technology.” In 2025, the South Korean government faced a fierce backlash for rolling out AI textbooks riddled with factual inaccuracies and data privacy risks without testing them first in a pilot program to evaluate how they affect student learning.

And despite their optimism, South Koreans are still worried that AI could displace them from their jobs. After Hyundai announced in January that it will deploy Atlas humanoid robots across its car factories, the Hyundai Motor Group union protested vehemently. “Without labor-management agreement, not a single robot using new technology will be allowed to enter the workplace,” the union said. Sixty-four percent of South Koreans fear AI could displace human labor and exacerbate inequality, although 52% believe it could also increase productivity. 

On a recent Friday night in the Seoul Central Market, I went out with my cousins to a pocha, a late-night restaurant that serves fish cakes stacked in neat pyramids. As we clinked our cups of soju cut with beer—the scrappy staple cocktail of every Korean night out—one cousin asked me if I’d asked ChatGPT about my saju, a traditional Korean fortune-telling practice.

A 29-year-old insurance agent in Seoul praying for a new job and a boyfriend, she said asking ChatGPT about work and dating was her favorite pastime. She pulled up her phone and punched my birth date into the chatbot. 

Addicted to their screens, trapped between unemployment and dead-end jobs, and priced out of marriage and homeownership, 46% of South Koreans in their 20s have used a chatbot to read their fortunes, according to a survey by Korea Gallup. 

My cousin said she also asks ChatGPT for tips on trading stocks, dreaming big about making bank on her investment accounts into which she’s been pouring her salary. ChatGPT, she believes, is her portal out of reality into a better future.

Despite how fond she is of the chatbot as her shaman and financial advisor, she fears losing her job to AI. She still uses ChatGPT feverishly at work, as all her coworkers do, afraid of falling behind. 

“I sometimes fear AI, but for now, it’s just so useful,” she said.