>> TLDR: There's a lot of value in thinking ahead and seeing the future. The clones are nice and exciting but they give me "I could have built this first, yes but you didn't" vibes. I hope they manage to keep it up and push the space forward again

This all sounds intelligent and likely, and yet we can come up with countless counter examples where the first mover is not the big winner, and nobody cares about who did it first. There is typically way more value in nailing the execution of a big idea someone else came up with, rather than "seeing the future".