This line of argument indicates a basic refusal to take the threat model seriously, I think.
Should Google worry about Chinese state-backed attackers using attacking its systems to target dissidents or for corporate or military espionage? "Why, when they're using machines or VMs, and you can just shut those off?"
At a sophisticated-human level of capability, there are many established techniques to circumvent people trying to shut off your access to compute in general, or even to specific systems. It's certainly possible that AI will never reach a sophisticated-human level of capability at this task—it hasn't yet—but the fact that computers have off switches gives no information about the likelihood or proximity of reaching that threshold.
Should Google worry about Chinese state-backed attackers using attacking its systems to target dissidents or for corporate or military espionage? "Why, when they're using machines or VMs, and you can just shut those off?"
At a sophisticated-human level of capability, there are many established techniques to circumvent people trying to shut off your access to compute in general, or even to specific systems. It's certainly possible that AI will never reach a sophisticated-human level of capability at this task—it hasn't yet—but the fact that computers have off switches gives no information about the likelihood or proximity of reaching that threshold.