Massive Claude outage: Anthropic's technical issues compound geopolitical pressure
On June 18, Anthropic's Claude chatbot experienced a major outage affecting thousands of users worldwide. Starting around 10:03 Moscow time, the service stopped responding to queries, and messages failed to load. Status aggregators recorded a sharp spike in complaints—ranging from 420 to over 770 reports within 24 hours. Free-tier users received notifications that Claude could not respond due to insufficient computing power.
This marks the second major incident in a month. In early June, Claude faced a similar issue impacting the web interface, mobile app, and the Claude Code platform. Such recurring technical failures raise questions about the stability of Anthropic's infrastructure, especially amid growing demand for its models.
Pressure from All Sides
The outage coincided with a period of heightened scrutiny for the company. JPMorgan Chase banned its employees in Hong Kong from accessing Anthropic's models, mirroring a move by Goldman Sachs, which in April removed Claude from its list of approved tools for bankers in the same region. Both decisions are linked to rising tensions between the U.S. and China over AI technology, data security, and access to advanced computing tools.
The situation is compounded by a U.S. export directive. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick ordered Anthropic to suspend exports of the Mythos and Fable models to all foreign nationals, citing the risk of their use by military intelligence agencies in China, Russia, and other countries. Against this backdrop, a G7 leaders' dinner took place on June 17 with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei in attendance, while a meeting between the EU cybersecurity agency ENISA and the company was scheduled for June 18.
Europe has adopted a cautious stance. G7 diplomats emphasize a willingness to jointly mitigate AI risks, turning the incident into a platform for cooperation rather than division. EU technology chief Henna Virkkunen noted that countermeasures should not be discriminatory toward partners. Notably, the issue of Anthropic was not even raised during a bilateral meeting between Ursula von der Leyen and Trump.
Analyst's Opinion: Recurring technical failures amid geopolitical pressure are a troubling signal for Anthropic. The company risks losing the trust of not only corporate clients but also regulators. If infrastructure issues remain unresolved, even diplomatic support from the G7 may not salvage its reputation.