Indeed, it's a sort of Academic Supremacy – "we're smart so we get to control the world". I think SV tech has had an aspect of this for a long time, but Anthropic do seem to be the clearest version of it in a while. Until regulation catches up.
I think OpenAI and Anthropic have been asking for a sane regulatory framework for some time, so they aren't the ones calling the shots for humanity. It's just not happening in this administration.
The bit I don't like is taking a hard moral stance on what you are allowed to do with the models, while simultaneously taking the guardrails off themselves and then marketing the results of that. "Look how good our model is when it does things we don't let you do" is a pretty bad marketing line.
And this is all in the face of Anthropic stating that they think this is an existential issue for the human race. It's a bad look.