As to the penalties for this; check Appendix A to Title 31 (Code of Federal Regulations), Subtitle B, Chapter 5, Part 501.
Fines can be up to and including the financial amount found to be in question. And this can be affected by; wilfulness, recklessness, pattern of conduct, managerial involvement (amongst others). Could be up to millions.
A criminal conviction may be up to 30 years in prison.
So the choices are a) follow the rule of law, or b) face years in court and possibly go to prison for 30 years. And for the later, to achieve what? Those people will never get back on the list (while the sanctions are in force) even if Linus "stood up" to the US Govt.
As the prayer of serenity says "Give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference".
Getting sanctions overturned can be a good thing if they are unjust (and I personally can't see how these sanctions are unjust), but keeping someone as a maintainer on the Linux kernel is almost certainly not the way to do it.
If YOU want to do something about it, then fork the kernel and invite those people who have been removed as maintainers to join you.
You are wrong about things people cannot change. All of this depends on “small people” believing they are small, and finding convenient stereotypical excuses for “doing what everyone does”. Not on some magical evil powers.
There's a lot of advice in those threads telling people what they should do. I wonder if people are going to follow them themselves, and rush to storm offices of agencies and military bases to figure out what's happening.
On the other hand, if you're saying “I'm fine if one day they torture Torvalds until he gives all the passwords, as long as it's in full accordance with the law™, and for the Big Good Cause. It's something that we cannot change, la-la-la~~~”, then state it clearly.
If on the other hand your issue is who is a maintainer, then fork it and set up your own maintainers.
If your issue is how it was done (i.e. lack of transparency) then there was an apology made, so either accept the apology, or keep ranting (maybe into the void)
If your issue is that the US gets to decide what their laws are, we you could try to overthrow the US, but I wish you luck.
If your issue is that laws in different countries are different, well then you're fighting the universe on that one; existence is far more complicated than what one single person can hold in their head, I'd suggest you get used to the idea that life is complicated, or to quote a lawyer "it depends".
If you think the company at hand is incorrectly being sanctioned, then write to the OFAC. But considering just the open source intel on the company supplying dual use equipment via Rosoboronpostavka it's very unlikely to be de-listed any time soon.
Being rude is not the issue. The issue is being ordered to “act now” by someone else, and haphazardly executing that order. Neither Linux Foundation, nor Torvalds has made any direct statements making it clear they acted on their own accord (which would be most obvious thing to do). If this doesn't bother you, you may believe a bit too much that nothing extrajudicial happens in USA.
If that happened, Linux community might need to put some pressure on organizations involved instead of cheering carelessly.
That "someone else" is us; it's the government passing laws and regulations, "of the people, by the people, for the people". Now that may not be as true in non democracies, but in a democracy the people elect representatives from the people. Those people make the law, and the people follow the law. Obviously it's not perfect, but as Churchill once said "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others".
Just remember, control is an illusion, you can influence things; some more than others, but control itself is an illusion.