Should probably look up how many private companies are suing the government at any one time because of a breach of contract. And that's publicly breaching.

NSA and other three-letter agencies happily do it under cloak and dagger.

I agree with you that the govt can and does violate contracts. So the fact that they need Anthropic to agree signals that it’s more than just lawyers preventing the DoW from doing whatever they want.

What's the US history around nationalization? Would "confiscation", ever be a likelyhood on escalation?

On a quick search I came up with an article, that at least thematically, proposes such ideas about the current administration "Nationalization by Stealth: Trump’s New Industrial Playbook"

https://thefulcrum.us/trump-state-control-capitalism