Maybe this will be simpler for Anthropic to understand if they take their own high-minded philosophical nonsense and ego out of it and consider it the way a neutral party would. Suppose a company calls themselves The Doomsday Device Company. They make and sell excellent-quality doomsday devices. They regularly go online to proclaim that their doomsday devices are the best and most powerful, and also that doomsday dev…
So what are the current leaders in the field supposed to do to stave off competition? They should convince the public that they do have a doomsday device, claim it must be regulated, and then they can profit from their duopoly because it's exceedingly expensive to break into the high end of the market. The government has its own nefarious incentives, not limited to collecting fees and using the unrestricted versions for surveillance or black hat stuff.