▲ Anthropic
The U.S. government has stepped up to defuse the growing controversy over the so-called "kill switch," which suggests that U.S. artificial intelligence services could be cut off at any time.
According to Reuters, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently sent a diplomatic cable to U.S. diplomatic missions worldwide, instructing them to actively refute the claim that the U.S. government can arbitrarily block AI services, calling it exaggerated.
The argument that a kill switch exists spread after the Donald Trump administration restricted foreign users' access to Anthropic's latest AI models, Mythos and Fable, citing national security reasons last month.
Concerns were also raised that the U.S. government could restrict AI services to foreign countries when necessary, particularly after President Trump signed an executive order requiring a 30-day security review before the release of advanced AI models.
At the time, Aura Salla, a Finnish member of the European Parliament, emphasized that Europe should no longer depend on technology that the U.S. government can cut off at any time.
Reuters reported that the State Department cable, drafted on July 16, contained messages aimed at easing international wariness toward U.S. AI.
In particular, U.S. diplomats were provided with logic to counter the kill switch claims.
The core message is that a 30-day testing period before the release of new technology cannot be called a kill switch, and that a button allowing the government to shut everything down does not exist.
The State Department also reportedly instructed diplomats to address the "AI sovereignty" argument—which suggests that countries should develop their own AI—by emphasizing that attempting to build one's own from scratch instead of using the superior AI from the U.S. is a waste of time and resources.
(Photo: AP, Yonhap News)
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