Because they are not idiots. Were they idiots, they'd quickly lose to someone more clueful.
The idea to regulate only international peering looks best so far. It's much like (m)any other regulations that are only present on the border between countries, and are absent inside.
At the very least, limiting such regulations to international-only limits their blast radius.
With China specifically it could work, because they internally control their points of peering with the rest of the world. With Russia, less so. With a "normal" Western country, likely infeasible, but in the latter case the internet access is not controlled and weaponized by the government, so there is no real need, self-regulation suffices.
"Nationalizing the internet like the telephony system" is a meme and agenda among some ITU people, originating from China and Russia.
And now the American FCC comes with this... Perhaps the FBI's counter intelligence branch should do a better job because this smells fishy.
They need to. Honestly we need a way to completely segregate Chinese and Russian networks off, as well as anyone who peers with them. They are using our open networks to brazenly attack us in broad daylight… it’s time to fight back.
How many ways do they have to transmit to Western networks? Proxies, tunnels, rooted machines, sending balloons with 5G modems that dwell in our airspace for days? I would much rather see a 100:1 defensive effort in operating system security. Lockdown mode in macOS is like Spinal Tap's amplifier that goes to 11. Why not just have 10 be the most secure, and make it go up to 10?
The idea to regulate only international peering looks best so far. It's much like (m)any other regulations that are only present on the border between countries, and are absent inside.