This is what I’m thinking, too. OpenAI is gaining a structural advantage purely on the basis of not being considered an enemy of the administration. Anthropic really blew it with Washington.
It doesn't look like it; similar restrictions apply to GPT-5.6 as used to apply to Fable.
I think the Fable ban happened because Anthropic was first to release a capable enough model.
By "blew it with Washington" you mean "Didn't donate millions to the ballroom."