Not quite, they also have more poor people to a scale that doesn't exist in many countries in Europe.

A consequence of having more poor people: strain on the healthcare and justice systems (relatively more acutely ill people, relatively more people committing crime) and bad educational outcomes (poor people tend to score lower).

A consequence of having more rich people: democratic processes are regularly under pressure due to the influence of rich people trying to make more favourable processes. Government institutions getting swayed by money from these rich people in exchange for preferable treatment.

Those two countries have far worse inequality than most countries in Europe. So yes, he might have better opportunities in US and China, but that's because he was born in Europe and will be in a better position to choose his future than if he had been born in a country where the inequality level meant he could not access the opportunities available in that country. You need to think about why those countries have better opportunities in the first place. They paid a price for that.

Developers are guilty of hubris and they are getting slapped back to reality.

Clearly not, given that the frontier labs have gotten away with unathorized access to a bunch of sites including some from the Pentagon.

This. I imagine they are showcasing a template to hire a new breed of cheap highly replaceable/fireable devs.

You forget the people who have unalived themselves because some LLM told them to do so.

Have these labs pay ANYTHING?

Have you seen Lord of War? They never will.