Sort of. What they want is no responsibility “wow we didn’t tell it to do that explicitly!” And to convince the public and government officials that “AI is actually really dangerous, so please ban all the foreign competitors on grounds of national security (totally unrelated to our potential lack of earnings and their ability to offer 98% the product for 1% the cost).”

So still most likely publicity stunt. A reproducible one, done only by the largest domestic ones precisely because they are not worried about the question of who is culpable if a law is broken, because they didn’t tell it explicitly to do it and also they still have a couple piles of circular cash they can use on bribes, which may be their only path to keeping the grift train going. They’re in no way in danger of being held accountable here, they do worse things everyday, and their concern is making money, full stop. They will lie cheat and steal their way through circular finance deals, bribes, extortions, anticompetitive behavior, marketing stunts, propaganda, and backroom deals as much as they can to accomplish that goal. When you understand their actions through that lens, well, things like this make sense.