Big if true. Any alleged "step change" over 4.6 is worth paying attention to.

Also, Hegseth did a big fucky wucky if true - since they went scorched earth with Anthropic, this could mean denying the US frontier model capabilities.

It would be pretty amusing if Anthropic emerges as the clear winner (for some period of time) and other governments can use them but the US government cannot.

Current admin is certainly too prideful to walk something like this back. After all, admitting mistakes is unmasculine, and we have very manly men in charge of war round these parts!

This is exactly the outcome you would expect authoritarians to generate. Not interested in facts, more interested in subservience. The good news is that surrounding yourself with incompetence is how authoritarian regimes fall. The bad news is, well, the country where this is playing out.