Should autonomous weapons kill people without human judgment? Should a government conduct mass surveillance on its own citizens? The U.S. government has taken action against a San Francisco-based AI firm for refusing to enable either. On the surface, the dispute is over whether President Donald Trump’s Pentagon or Anthropic should set the terms on how AI is used. In February, the Pentagon designated Anthropic a “supply chain risk,” and federal agencies were directed to stop using its product, with potential penalties for continued use. But the questions at the heart of this case — when may a life be taken,...