Stopping it's not a hopeless gesture, it's dangerous as fuck. If you stop research but all your adversaries don't, you're left behind. Let's assume that all w

Stopping it's not a hopeless gesture, it's dangerous as fuck. If you stop research but all your adversaries don't, you're left behind. Let's assume that all western societies stop, but let's say, China doesn't or Russia, and they keep advancing the technology. If the tech brings efficiencies in play, and you don't have access to them, you're in a really bad place, maybe even worse off that if you had continued and risked the status quo because you were afraid. The genie is out of the bottle at this point, there's not putting it back in.