The Formal mechanism by which sovereign military/intelligence apparatus accesses frontier capability held by private firms without compromising the civilian-commercial veneer. Surface visible in the Hegseth-Anthropic Feb 2026 dispute: $200 million classified contract (July 2025), DPA Title III threat, 'Supply-Chain Risk' designation with 6-month grace period. Parallel architectures: JWCC multi-cloud ($9 billion DOD), C2S AWS-CIA ($600 million), Project Stargate ($500 billion/10GW). The backchannel is load-bearing; the public designation is the performative theater. Confirmed operational via WSJ disclosure that Claude-via-Palantir powered Iran and Venezuela kinetic operations throughout the dispute.