I think you're right. "Guardrails" as a concept has always struck me as a band-aid solution which any sufficiently motivated actor will circumvent by either bypassing them or using unrestricted, open-weight models.
In order to start securing and accepting our new reality we need to assume that capable, open-weight, unrestricted models will be widely available, and that their 3-6 month lag behind frontier proprietary models is just our forewarning of what attackers will soon be capable of. Trying to legislate against or control trade in such a valuable commodity is folly.
I also think that lag is going to shrink over time as the open-weight labs get more capable, acquire more hardware and the plateau starts to emerge.
In order to start securing and accepting our new reality we need to assume that capable, open-weight, unrestricted models will be widely available, and that their 3-6 month lag behind frontier proprietary models is just our forewarning of what attackers will soon be capable of. Trying to legislate against or control trade in such a valuable commodity is folly.
I also think that lag is going to shrink over time as the open-weight labs get more capable, acquire more hardware and the plateau starts to emerge.