I kind of think I am doing the opposite?

Apart from rootkit and backdoors that are more difficult to install as non-root, you cannot build specific tunnels as you don't have network permissions.

There are some user space network capabilities, but they are easily breaking, or discovered and in general not resilient to simple reboots. This is one of the reasons you shouldn't leave your client 24/7 on.

The difference is with root it’s easier to install further, more resident, malware

It's true that in personal computers there might not be as much usage of users as in a multiuser computer or a server.

But without root access a virus wouldn't be able to affect system files, so it would have much less persistence and would be much easier for it to be removed, even automatically by some built in or third party antivirus.

Or, it might be possible to just remove it by making a separate user, and accessing the files of the older user from a folder.

In personal cellphones, also, there's heavy sandboxing, so in an OS like android, there would be a big difference betwen root and app compromise, if you don't get root you are only able to access the app data of the app you compromise.

Similar in Mac I think, but I'm not an expert, each app is isolated and a process from one app can only access its own data, escalating to root would allow affecting files of other apps.

But we are talking about containers, so in all likelihood this is about either servers or server developers, which make heavy use of separate users for even single use stuff like an HTTP server, whether manually or automatically, run 'apt/yum install apache2' and you'll see how it creates a separate user automatically.

Yes, root still matters.

To me, they do sound like the kind of things an attacker would want, if they found a reliable, reproducible, automatable path to them. If I was writing malware, ransomware, or just exfiltrating data, I'd be much happier to have root access to do it. Even simple botnets, I'd probably want to try to replace a regular service that most everybody runs (like cupsd) with one that functions exactly like the real one, but also does the malicious activity, and similarly try to patch the package manager to persist it on updates.

The main risk is not that the agent breaks out of their sandbox, although it's an infitesimal possibility (that increases to certainty if you increase the token budget to 100M$ and use subagents to spend it all at once).

The main risk (for you, mere human without a 100M$ budget) is that it downloads a compromised package or vulnerability, or that it runs a stray rm -rf or some stupid stuff. A user provides reasonable protection, you don't NEED a vm (and even then that can be escaped).

I agree with your main point, and found it stupid that I had to search around to find what the hell was even being talked about directly. That said, the accusation of racism is about a Dane attending far-right British rallies, British anti-immigration protests, and saying things about deporting the populations of Muslims and Romani from Britain, Copenhagen, and Denmark. It doesn't make much sense to call the DHH racism issue "American politics".

>American politics

Is racism/aversion to it a uniquely American phenomenon?