It’s not just admirable it’s the obvious position to take and any alternative is head scratching.
It’s clear that this is mostly a glorified loyalty test over a practical ask by the administration. Strangely reminiscent of Soviet or Chinese policies where being agreeable to authority was more important than providing value to the state.
My interpretation is that this is what happens when you make a Fox News host Secretary of Defense.
I think he is just too dumb to figure out a way to "finesse" the situation so the NSA etc. can use it however they want, or at least to know that it's politically intractable to make it a public fight.
If it's a loyalty test then you'd think the DoD would be willing to let them "fail" and simply drop the contract, but instead they're threatening to label Anthropic a supply chain risk.
If we're going by Occam's razor: it's Friday so Pete probably started drinking ~10:30-11am.