There is no evidence that this was a condition of the deal for working with the government on this. PRC already is a Total Surveillance state. The claim made by Anthropic is very specific, and it's that they feel that the law has not caught up to how AI can be used to aggregate very large amounts of data that can be obtained without a warrant through data brokers. The government already does this. Maybe you agree with Anthropic's point here, and it's certainly a good one, but they are building up a face-saving argument over what is already established precedent. An is vs. ought dichotomy and raising it as a redline is ridiculous.

At the end of the day I think many people simply want the United States to lose this race so they can feel good about their principles.