I think it's more likely they are terrified of someone making a prompt that gets the model to say something racist or problematic (which shouldn't be too hard), and the backlash they could receive as a result of that.
Is there anyone with a spine left in science? Or are they all ruled by fear of what might be said if whatever might happen?
Is it a base model, or did it get some RLHF on top? Releasing a base model is always dangerous.
The French released a preview of an AI meant to support public education, but they released the base model, with unsurprising effects [0]
[0] https://www.leparisien.fr/high-tech/inutile-et-stupide-lia-g...
(no English source, unfortunately, but the title translates as: "“Useless and stupid”: French generative AI Lucie, backed by the government, mocked for its numerous bugs")