The "no idea" from Trump is doing a lot of work here. Two months ago he's calling them radical leftists, now his chief of staff is sitting down with Amodei, and he doesn't know about it? Sure.
This is just realpolitik. Mythos spooked someone in the national security apparatus and suddenly ideology takes a back seat. Happens every time, tough talk until the tech becomes too strategically important to ignore.
What I'm genuinely curious about though: does anyone know what "unfettered access" actually looked like in Anthropic's view versus the Pentagon's? Because that's the core dispute and nobody's really reported on the specifics. How close did they actually get to a deal before it fell apart?