The U.S. government asked OpenAI to stagger the release of its latest model, GPT-5.6, according to a staff Q&A where CEO Sam Altman said the model is available in limited preview to only a small group of customers handpicked by the U.S. government. The federal government, specifically the Office of the National Cyber Director and the Office of Science and Technology Policy, requested the delay. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick called Altman to warn him against releasing GPT-5.6 to the public without prior approval from government agencies. Altman said in a memo, "We’ve made clear to the U.S. government that this is not our preferred long-term model and will work with them and others in industry to achieve a more sustainable approach for future releases." This follows a similar situation in early April when Anthropic released Claude Mythos Preview to select institutions, later building Fable 5, a watered-down version. The U.S. government put both Fable 5 and Mythos on an export control list three days after Fable 5's release, leading Anthropic to pull the model completely from the market. President Donald Trump signed an executive order earlier this month asking U.S. AI labs to give the government access to their latest models 30 days before general release.