The thing I keep thinking about with this sort of behavior is how Zoom became big in video conferencing. They had good features, yes, and COVID obviously gave every player in that space a big opportunity, but Zoom distinguished themselves in great part by doing every underhanded shady thing they could to make their app 'frictionless', privacy-invading, data-grabbing, and generally preyed on end users' lack of awareness. They did not keep doing all of those things, as far as I know – they got called out a lot but I have steered clear of them since my initial experience with them so I don't know how much they cleaned up their act. But taking the most aggressive and least ethical approach certainly seemed to have helped them get to the top at a very competitive time, and once there they could probably afford to stop doing the most egregious things.

It seems obvious that this same dynamic is in play with the frontier AI companies now. They know if they win the race to the they'll be forgiven their sins, or anyway they'll be beyond the reach of effective punishment.