Okay but then why is that also seemingly a red line must have for the Department of War? Isn't it just a tool of domestic surveillance and counterinsurgency for them? Seems like a distraction from any real U.S. national security objectives.

It’s not, the memo that set all this off says nothing about the Terminator or Big Brother. The real objective in this case is that if Anthropic sells the United States a weapon then the United States’ elected leadership gets to decide how to use it. It is not more complicated than this.