Thankfully Russia, China, etc have the same qualms as we do in the United States and will refused to send their brightest engineers to work on weapons so they don't become "morally compromised"!!!

I don't think the long-term game theory of race to the bottom works out quite how you think.

"Our enemies would have no qualms building a weapon that will end life on earth! We better build it first because we're the good guys!"

We also used to point to Russia and China as places we don't want to copy.

This was the same logic that was used when building nuclear weapons, and many of the scientists involved in that tried to find a different path (most notably Niels Bohr). I think we would be in a much better world if they had been successful. It's good that we're trying again w/ LLMs.

People in those countries do have qualms, they are people after all and they choose to work in other fields.

The US is sure becoming an unfree scary place just like Russia. Keep it up following those role models!

I don't know if you're being sarcastic(sounds like you are!) but indeed a lot of engineers left Russia after the war in Ukraine started as they didn't want to be drafted and didn't want to contribute to the war effort in some way, even if indirectly. Of course, many stayed or even willingly help. See how many engineers from Iran work abroad too, for moral and other reasons.

The point is - this happens everywhere, it's not just some weird western thing.