i think you need to engage seriously with the arguments they (or at least Anthropic) make for why they are building it — they feel that since it now possible, it will be built and they want to guide it in a positive direction rather than leave a vacuum for bad actors

I don't see why AI company PR statements are relevant here. Is OpenAI guiding it in a positive direction with their DoD contract?

Well they're doing a pretty poor job of guiding it in a positive direction and ethically speaking they are almost indistinguishable from the bad actors....

Bad as defined by whom? :)