Existential fear is a very different regulatory regime than popular politics, and I don't think many understand this. Dario’s hand was forced. The regulatory hammer that comes from this backlash is a different instrument from the one that comes from data center bills or job losses. Those are about money. This is about dying, and when existential fear goes mainstream, the policy that comes out of it is not measured. COVID is the precedent: a planet locked down, speech policed, monetary policy without precedent. Locking down AI is easier than that, because a pause costs the median voter nothing he can feel. Now put Dario in that environment. Anthropic is the safety lab, so if any lab was going to say something it had to be them. It also had to be now, before the industry got regulated out of existence. The public announcement changes the game theory for the rest of the industry. Without regulation, the race is a prisoner's dilemma and the dominant strategy is to accelerate. However, once one lab publicly slows down, whoever keeps accelerating becomes the visible accelerationist, the one the regulation gets written against. So the best response to a public slowdown is a public slowdown, which is why Sam and Elon agreed within hours.