Smartest people will be working against that. You're thinking of opportunistic people with myopia.

Pretty much the entire tech industry has bent the knee by now - they even gifted the new ruler with golden statues. It's not just a handful of people...

Few people have the balls to do the right thing when the risks pass a certain limit. And yet it's most important to do the right thing at the largest scale.

and when Trump keels over and dies, what happens then? sort of a brittle business plan

The law firms failed to do so.

Some of them have certainly flagged themselves as opportunistic and myopic.