Massive Claude outage: Anthropic under fire amid geopolitical pressure
On June 18, the Claude chatbot from Anthropic experienced a serious outage affecting thousands of users worldwide. The service stopped responding to queries, and messages were not sent or loaded in the browser. The peak of complaints, recorded by status aggregators, occurred at 10:03 Moscow time: the number of reports ranged from 420 to over 770 per day.
This is not the first technical incident this month. In early June, Claude faced a massive outage that paralyzed its web interface, mobile app, and the Claude Code platform. The current outage continues a worrying trend, exacerbating an already tense situation surrounding the company.
Geopolitical Background: Banks, Exports, and the G7
The outage occurred at a time when Anthropic found itself at the center of several events. JPMorgan Chase, following Goldman Sachs' lead, banned its employees in Hong Kong from accessing Anthropic's models. The reason was wording in the licensing agreement that the bank deemed risky. Both decisions fit into the growing tension between the US and China over AI technologies, data security, and access to advanced computing tools.
Against this backdrop, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick ordered Anthropic to suspend exports of the Mythos and Fable models to foreign nationals, citing the risk of their use by the military intelligence of China, Russia, and other countries. Notably, no official notification from US authorities was received — there is only a statement from the company itself.
Diplomatic Dinner and Europe's Caution
On June 17, a dinner of G7 leaders took place in Évian-les-Bains, attended by the heads of leading AI companies, including Dario Amodei (Anthropic), Sam Altman (OpenAI), Demis Hassabis (Google DeepMind), and Arthur Mensch (Mistral). The official agenda was to stimulate economic growth and societal resilience, not cybersecurity threats. However, according to industry representatives, the dispute between the Trump administration and Anthropic remained the "elephant in the room."
Europe, for its part, is not inclined toward confrontation. G7 diplomats emphasize a readiness to reduce AI risks jointly with the US, 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.
My analysis: Repeated Claude outages amid geopolitical pressure are a worrying signal for the market. Investors and corporate clients are beginning to doubt the reliability of Anthropic's infrastructure, which could undermine trust in the company in the long term, especially given fierce competition with OpenAI and Google. If Anthropic does not stabilize its services and clarify legal risks, we may see an outflow of corporate customers, which would negatively impact its market capitalization.