AFAIK it wasn't in play here, but yes, we do allow that to a degree via the Defense Production Act

I think the answer is the military finds another vendor willing to deal, or move it in house.

It's not like Anthropic will be nationalized any more than the bankrupted auto companies of 2008.

It’s not a problem. But it’s also not a problem for the DOD to decide that it doesn’t want to use anthropic or have its suppliers use anthropic for DOD matters. The DOD didn’t ban private citizens from using Anthropic. You can sell in your own terms but the DOD can also buy in its own terms.

The customer is always right. It's more of a tradition.

Yeah, for national security being the biggest one. Also Congress can do whatever they want if they desired. If Congress mandated that all social media companies have to become workplace democracies, that's totally fine and legal.

We've forgotten what it means to run a society, we're allowed to change rules how we see fit whenever we want to. Only the elites exercise this power, but people have it too.

"Are there any special rules"

Yes. Paragraph #1, sentence #1 of the US Constitution: "provide for the common defence[sic]". This is further elaborated upon in other original Constitution articles and subsequent amendments.

From that, we derive a long, storied history of things, among the more recent of which, and the operative matter here, is the Defense Production Act circa 1950.

The US is fundamentally based on the obligation of mutual military defense, and delegates the authority to call military balls and strikes, such as who will and will not be permitted to contract with the US military, exclusively to POTUS. Anthropic et al. are way out of their depth when they imagine their "terms and conditions" imbue them with some sort of military veto power in the US. Trump's action here, given his nature, is actually moderate: he could take this much further if he wishes.

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