At Wednesday’s G7 summit, world leaders including French President Emmanuel Macron and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed concern that the United States could cut off their country’s access to top American AI models at any time.
Over lunch, Macron warned G7 leaders and AI executives (including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and President Donald Trump) that if the U.S. is able to “switch off from one day to the next,” it could not only harm the economies of European customers, but also the AI companies themselves.
The comments came just days after the Trump administration blocked exports of Anthropic’s latest Mythos 5 and Fable 5 models on national security grounds. The order was issued after Amazon reported to the White House that it could potentially circumvent certain safety guardrails. Cybersecurity experts argue that the features cited by the government also exist in freely available models such as OpenAI, but Anthropic’s model remains on ice.
This episode exposed the risks that many international companies are grappling with. Companies and governments building on America’s AI infrastructure must consider the possibility that their access could be revoked overnight for reasons that will never be talked about.
Prime Minister Modi also expressed concern about President Trump’s move to block Anthropic’s model, adding that democracies need unfettered access to top AI models to protect critical infrastructure, the Financial Times reported.
“The recent restrictions on access to Anthropic’s models confirm what we at Cohere have known all along: that the continued dependence of businesses and democracies on a few large tech companies is dangerous for their resilience,” Aidan Gomez, co-founder and CEO of Canadian enterprise AI company Cohere, said in a statement shared with TechCrunch. “Digital sovereignty is not just about market competition or specific companies or nations. It is about who controls the fundamental technologies that will shape our economic security and national sovereignty for decades to come.”
During the meeting, G7 leaders also discussed creating a “trusted partner” system that would give countries other than the United States access to advanced AI models from companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI. The goal is to maintain a kind of open trade network that circumvents U.S. regulations. Both countries and companies could become reliable partners, as long as they use the model to develop stronger defenses against rivals like China.
But it’s unclear how widespread that trusted partner system will be, or whether it will be a solution for startups in Paris and Bangalore whose products just broke without warning.
In any case, Macron noted that it makes sense for Washington to support such a plan and allow broader access to Mythos. If America’s access to AI could disappear overnight, no one would want to buy it.
These comments come as Europe and other non-U.S. countries seek to advance AI sovereignty, a claim that becomes increasingly difficult as the U.S. model continues to lead the way and no one wants to be left behind.
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