Challenge countries? LMAO, no. Maybe one of them, some particularly daft cunt, might delude himself into saying or doing some shit that attracts the attention of some state actor, and then either "kill himself" or just "pass away".
Serious state actors can point a districts worth of people into the sole interest of murder. Most of these people don't even know what they're doing or why. Just entire machinery solely for killing one dude, and this dude doesn't even have a nuke or two to launch if things go sideways? Training exercise. More likely it's going to be their own government.
Now that the cats out of the bag they need to move fast and secure anything that can be used against them. Hence the doubling down?