1) We don't really know how they arrived to this result except that they had a lead and that they threw millions of compute at the problem. The article is written in a way that makes you believe that it was just an agent loop with little human intervention, but without any evidence.
2) If the threats are to be believed, it is concerning how far they are willing to go to show how capable the model is. One would think their products and credibility would be enough to speak for themselves.