I suspect that Anthropic wanted the govt to ensure they would not use Claude for mass surveillance or autonomous weapons even if it does become legal in the future. OpenAI was comfortable with the agreement because it's currently illegal and they can make a public statement that they still side with Anthropic on the ethics side.

I also believe that Anthropic's CEO just didn't get along with the DoW in negotiations. So much of these big contracts comes down to relationships.

Still pretty sleazy how the govt is being so aggressive about it. I wish they would have just denied the contract and picked another vendor.