Yeah I think if we're going to pause, that has to come from the US state dept. They have access to spies that can ensure a foreign power does not have a stockpile of chips that could allow them to progress past us.

I suspect they DO have such chip stockpiles, so I'd expect the state dept to advise openAI to continue forward. This is just like the space race of the 1960s, except with vastly higher stakes.