Currently, manual steps on the play store developer console is required to create an application that has Play Store "automatic protection" enabled:
https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/10183279

We have found that "automatic protection" is error-prone in multi-process applications and applications that include native libraries/code. It would be really helpful to our manual QA process to be able to programmatically distribute applications with "automatic protection" enabled on them.