I think the combination of "DoW/DoD opposes specific Anthropic rules against activities that is already considered unlawful" and "DoW wants them to change it to 'all lawful purposes'" indicates to me that DoW sees themselves as the primary arbitrator of what is and isn't lawful when it comes to war.

Which isn't a crazy principle; "military contractors get to decide for themselves whether fulfilling military acquisitions requests is or is not lawful" seems like a weird set of incentives and/or push us into the bad type of balance of powers stuff that Eisenhower warned us about[1].

But we definitely also have precedents that push in the other direction. In general, "you must do anything lawful a superior orders you to do, and your superior is the sole arbitrator of what is and is not lawful" seems like a bad policy with a poor track record, to put it mildly. Besides the obvious famous examples in the 20th century, I'm reminded of Qwest refusing to comply with mass NSA wiretapping after 9/11, and Apple refusing to break encryption of iPhones for the FBI.

[1] Admittedly in the opposite direction on the object-level of military contractors pushing for more war.