Helen Toner has done a huge amount of work slowing down capabilities research in China. That's why she lived in Beijing for a year, she is a big part of why there are a lot of Chinese researchers from various AI labs signed onto the CAIS statement, and it's what her relationship to the Pentagon is all about. I think she is probably the individual person who knows the most in the world about the relative AI capabilities of China and the US, and her career is about working with the Pentagon, AI companies in the USA, and AI companies in China to prevent an arms race scenario around AI. It's the sort of work that really, really doesn't benefit from a lot of publicity, so it's unfortunate that this whole situation has put her in the spotlight and means someone else will probably need to backchannel between the US and China on AI safety now.
I don't know why she chose to publicly execute Altman, there just isn't enough information to say for sure. It probably wasn't a specific, imminent safety concern like "Our new frontier model was way more capable than we were expecting and attempted a breakout that nearly succeeded during internal red teaming", according to the new CEO it wasn't anything like that. The new CEO has heard their reason, but is putting a lot of pressure on them to put that reason in writing for some reason. I don't know why, we just don't have enough information.
But basically, she is a very qualified person on the exact topic you are concerned about and has devoted her career to solving that problem. I wouldn't write off what she's doing or has done here as "She didn't consider that China exists".
