It’s not about Anthropic vs. OpenAI anymore

The U.S. government is set to take an awful lot of control over which AI models get released. Two weeks after the U.S. government pulled Anthropic’s Fable and Mythos models , OpenAI’s new model seems to be headed for the same limbo. The Information broke the news Thursday that GPT 5.6 would be released only into limited preview, with the government approving the release “customer by customer” until a general release can be approved. If that preview only lasts a “couple of weeks,” as Altman reportedly projected, that might not be a particularly big problem. But Mythos has already been in preview for months, and there’s no indication it will make it to general release any time soon. Even a few weeks spent in review could significantly limit the economic upside of a costly new system, at a time when AI labs are trying desperately to improve their bottom lines. If the pace of model development slows as a result, it’s likely to put a similar chill on the ongoing data center buildout. If this goes bad, the entire industry could be at risk. Critically, OpenAI and Anthropic are now in the same exact position with the same problems facing them and the same disaster waiting if they fail. Conversations within the tech industry tend to focus on the role of one side or another in bringing this on, either accusing Anthropic of running a regulatory capture scheme or accusing OpenAI of cozying up to Trump to ice out a rival. …