The dispute seems to be specifically about safeguards that Anthropic has in its models and/or harnesses, that the DoD wants removed, which Anthropic refuses to do, and won’t sign a contract requiring their removal. Having implemented the safeguards and refusing their removal are actions, not “literally words”.
The "safeguards" you are referring to are contractual, i.e. words. There are no technical safeguards, per the article.
The memo literally says that the reason they have these policies is -because- actual technical guardrails are not reliable enough.
No, “safeguards” goes beyond that, it’s a whole process at Anthropic:
https://www.anthropic.com/news/building-safeguards-for-claud...
https://alignment.anthropic.com/2025/introducing-safeguards-...
Again, these are just words, and they're a salad of legal terms of art that provide cover for virtually any action. "We prevent the -illegitimate- use..." [define illegitimate plz?]
In your second link, that team was defunded; the person heading it just left ceremoniously: https://x.com/mrinanksharma/status/2020881722003583421?s=46