It's actually low-key brilliant. Start a gold rush, when you realize the gold isn't actually there, pivot to selling shovels and keep hyping the gold rush. Fools and their money are soon parted, and there seem to be an endless supply of them.

He’s a modern day arms dealer.

The bot problem has been around since before Sam Altman was old enough to legally drink. For example in the early days the founders of Reddit were running bots to make the site look wayyy busier than it actually was in order to attract new users.

He's a convenient bogey-man, and a huge asshole, but he's the not the source of this problem.

Sure but they only want the bots they approve of. That way they can charge for the privilege of allowing someone's preferred bots onto the platform.