It's not surprising that guardrail triggers would degrade model performance. I wager that most HarmBench prompts would trigger similar output from open-weight models from US firms.
The link you cited postulates it is accidental.
Calling the sabotage "guardrails" doesn't change the fact that it's been intentionally sabotaged against the US.
Calling the sabotage "guardrails" doesn't change the fact that it's been intentionally sabotaged against the US.