What did they think was going to happen when they were actively doomsday fearmongering around the release of their own model? I assume somehow they thought this would lead to a moat with them being left safely inside the castle, but this response, and Reagan's 9 Words, were always infinitely more likely. It was a demonstration of a child-like level understanding of how regulatory capture works.
The PR from the US frontier labs has been poor to terrible from the beginning.
Among other things, "we have stolen the collected works of your culture, now help us grow so that you can all lose your livelihoods and become our serfs" has to be one of the absolute worst marketing approaches in history.
