The race is not a law of nature
Competitors coordinating to go slower is exactly what antitrust forbids, and exactly what safety requires. The answer is to change the rule, not to sue the restraint.
A firm that slows down alone loses, and everybody in this industry knows it. That is not a moral failing; it is the structure. Which is why the demand that each company restrain itself privately, without talking to anyone, is a demand that nothing happen.
Antitrust law exists because agreements among rivals usually take something from the public: a higher price, a smaller supply, a worse product. The pacing argument is that on this one product, some of the supply is the risk. A law written for bread and steel is being asked to referee a question it was never drafted for.
We already accept this logic elsewhere. Banks coordinate on capital standards, airlines on maintenance rules, drug companies on trial protocols — and where competition law would otherwise bite, legislatures have written exemptions, because the alternative was a race in the wrong direction.
The honest version of the complaint against the labs is not that they agreed. It is that they agreed among themselves, in private, with no public accountability for what they decided. That is a real objection, and its remedy is a public process with a waiver attached, not a lawsuit demanding they compete harder on the thing they say is dangerous.
Four subscribers are now suing over slower AI. Read the claim plainly: consumers were denied faster capability. If that is a harm the law must remedy, then the law has decided that the only permitted speed is maximum, and it has decided it without anyone ever voting for that.