I honestly don't know. When I think of an arms race, I typically think of rapid manufacturing and accumulation of "weapons." 

Do you think export controls between two countries are a sufficient condition for an arms race?

I don't disagree with this at all. But does this mean that blame can be attributed to the entire EA community? I think not. 

Re mentorship/funding: I doubt that his mentors were hoping that he would accelerate the chances of an arms race conflict. As a corollary, I am sure nukes wouldn't have been developed if the physics community in the 1930s didn't exist or mentored different people or adopted better ethical norms. Even if they did the latter, it is unclear if that would have prevented the creation of the bomb. 

(I found your comments under Ben West's posts insightful; if true, it highlights a divergence between the beliefs of the broader EA community and certain influential EAs in DC and AI policy circles.)

Currently, it is just a report, and I hope it stays that way.

And we contributed to this.

What makes you say this? I agree that it is likely that Aschenbrenner's report was influential here, but did we make Aschenbrenner write chapter IIId of Situational Awareness the way he did? 

But the background work predates Leopold's involvement.

Is there some background EA/aligned work that argues for an arms race? Because the consensus seems to be against starting a great power war.

Which software/application did you use to create these visualizations?

"but could be significant if the average American were to replace the majority of their meat consumption with soy-based products." 

Could you elaborate how you conclude that the effects of soy isoflavones could be significant if consumption were higher?

I read this summary article from the Linus Pauling institute a while ago and concluded, "okay, isoflavones don't seem like an issue at all, and in some cases might have health benefits" (and this matches my experience so far).^[1] The relevant section from the article:

Male reproductive health

Claims that soy food/isoflavone consumption can have adverse effects on male reproductive function, including feminization, erectile dysfunction, and infertility, are primarily based on animal studies and case reports (181). Exposure to isoflavones (including at levels above typical Asian dietary intakes) has not been shown to affect either the concentrations of estrogen and testosterone, or the quality of sperm and semen (181, 182). Thorough reviews of the literature found no basis for concern but emphasized the need for long-term, large scale comprehensive human studies (181, 183).

Unless there is some new piece of information that fairly moderately/strongly suggests that isoflavones do have feminizing effects, this seems like a non-issue. 

1. ^{^}

   A personal anecdote, not that it bears much weight, I have been consuming >15 ounces of tofu and >250 ml of soy milk nearly every day for the last four years, and I have noticed how "feminine" or "masculine" my body looks is almost entirely dependent on how much weight I lift in a week and my nutritional intake, rather than my soy intake.

A few quick pushbacks/questions:

1. I don't think the perceived epistemic strength of the animal welfare folks in EA should have any bearing on this debate unless you think that nearly everyone running prominent organizations like Good Food Institute, Faunalytics, the Humane League, and others is not truth-seeking (i.e., animal welfare organizations are culturally not truth-seeking and consequently have shoddy interventions and goals).
2. To what extent do you think EA funding be allocated based on broader social perception? I think we should near-completely discount broader social perceptions in most cases.
   1. The social perception point, which has been brought up by others, is confusing because animal welfare has broad social support. The public is negatively primed towards veganism but overwhelmingly positively so towards the general idea of not being unkind to (euphemism) farm animals.
3. "Going all-in on animal welfare at the expense of global development seems bad for the movement." —  I don't think this is being debated here though. Could you elaborate on why you think if an additional $100 million were allocated to Animal Welfare, it would be at the expense of Global Health & Development (GHD)? Isn't $100 million a mere fraction of the yearly GHD budget?

1. Causing unnecessary suffering is morally bad. Causing intense unnecessary suffering is morally worse.
2. Non-humans have the capacity to physically and psychologically suffer. The intensity of suffering they can experience is non-negligible, and plausibly, not that far off from that of humans. Non-humans have a dispreference towards being in such states of agony.
3. Non-human individuals are in constant and often intense states of agony in farmed settings. They also live short lives, sometimes less than 1/10th of their natural lifespan, which leads to loss of welfare they would have experienced if they were allowed to live till old age.
4. The scale of farmed animal suffering is enormous beyond comprehension; if we only consider land animals, it is around 100 billion; if crustaceans and fish are included, the number is close to 1000 billion; if insects are accounted for, then the number is in several 1000s of billions. Nearly all of these animals have lives not worth living.
5. The total dollar spent per unit of suffering experienced is arguably more than a thousand times lower for non-humans compared to humans. This seems unreasonable given the vast number of individuals who suffer in farmed settings. Doing a quick and dirty calculation, and only considering OpenPhil funding, we get ~$1 spent per human and ~0.0003 spent per non-human individual. Including non-EA funding into this estimation would make the discrepancy worser.
6. We are nowhere close to reducing the amount of non-humans in farmed settings. Meat consumption is predicted to rise by 50% in the next three decades, which would drastically increase the number of farmed animals living short, agony-filled lives. We also haven't yet had a breakthrough in cultivated meat, and if the Humbird report is to be believed, we should be skeptical of any such breakthroughs in the near future (if anything, we are seeing the first wave of cultivated meat bans, which may delay the transition to animal-free products).
7. Reducing farm animal suffering, via policy, advocacy, and development of alternative proteins, is tractable and solvable (for the last one in the list, we may need moonshot projects, which may imply raising even more funding).
8. Therefore, the additional $100 million is better spent on animal welfare than global health.

This was an April Fools' Day post, so it shouldn't be taken that seriously!