My understanding is that OpenAI's deal, and the deal others are signing, implicitly prevents the use of LLMs for mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons because today one care argue those aren't legal and the deal is a blanket for allowing all lawful use.

Today it can't be used for mass surveillance, but the executive branch has all the authority it needs to later deem that lawful if it wishes to, the Patriot Act and others see to that.

Anthropic was making the limits contractually explicit, meaning the executive branch could change the line of lawfulness and still couldn't use Anthropic models for mass surveillance. That is where they got into a fight and that is where OpenAI and others can claim today that they still got the same agreement Anthropic wanted.