anthropic's frontier model (referenced as fable 5) was taken offline by government action during this cycle, while competitors gemini 3.5 pro and gpt-5.6 continued operating or approached release without equivalent intervention. no published criteria govern when or why one model is halted while others proceed. this de facto discretionary gating regime — applied asymmetrically across labs — is structurally unusual because it creates access stratification by administrative decision rather than safety standard.