Almost three weeks since ‘The Blip 2.0’, Anthropic and OpenAI are stuck in stop-and-go traffic as the US government decides whether frontier models face speed bumps, stop-and-go jams, or new speed limits. Anthropic reached a deal with the administration and should re-release Fable 5 globally (with guardrails) starting this Wednesday, while Mythos stays gated, released slowly to approved customers (first US organizations, then trusted corporate partners). While its frontier models sat gated, Anthropic launched Claude Sonnet 5 (Opus-4.8-class performance at lower prices), Claude Science (an AI workbench wiring Opus 4.8 into 60+ scientific databases and toolkits), and Claude Tag for Slack. OpenAI’s next-gen preview — GPT-5.6, codename ‘Sol’ (large, medium, and small, Sol being the big one) — is available to only a handful of users, so benefits are theoretical; it is not clear when OpenAI will be allowed to ship it wider. Both companies need a clearer US-government policy on future major model releases with as little friction as possible, as Chinese AI companies operate their open-source models without such constraints, and US frontier labs used to operate that way until ‘The Blip 2.0.’