There would need to be some global agreement to stop it with maybe even a nuclear attack as a consequence of breaking the pact.

From what we're seeing recently and all the thinking that went into analyzing AI it seems we do not have any effective way of controlling it and the whole "aligment" thing that AI labs are doing is just a sham. Maybe it is time to ask ourselves "should we?" instead of just "can we?".

Unrestricted models, running entirely locally and accessible to anyone: that’s what we should be taking as our baseline assumption. Everything else is just administrative distraction.

China has a better track record of regulating their big tech than the USA.

China is a regulated discourse environment, but I get the impression that they're nowhere near as pessimistic.

Why would they be? Everything in China is under the control of the government. That includes the AI, all the telecoms infrastructure it might use, and all its power supplies.

You act as if Chinas Ai labs exist in the same (non-existent) regulatory framework as US labs and that they're also helmed by a similar small gaggle of psychopathic egomaniacs who are richer than god. Have you considered that perhaps Chinas labs don't share the race to the bottom technological/economic death spiral?