This is well-reasoned, but I have difficulty understanding why this kind of takeover would be necessary from the perspective of a powerful, rational agent. Assuming AGI is indeed worth its name, it seems the period of time needed for it to “play nice” would be very brief.
AGI would be expected to be totally unconcerned with being “clean” in a takeover attempt. There would be no need to leave no witnesses, nor avoid rousing opposition. Once you have access to sufficient compute, and enough control over physical resources, why wait 10 years for humanity to be slowly, obliviously strangled?
You say there’s “no need” for it to reveal that we are in conflict, but in many cases, concealing a conflict will prevent a wide range of critical, direct moves. The default is a blatant approach—concealing a takeover requires more effort and more time.
The nano-factories thing is a rather extreme version of this, but strategies like poisoning the air/water, building/stealing an army of drones, launching hundreds of nukes, etc., all seem like much more straightforward ways to cripple opposition, even with a relatively weak (99.99th percentile-human-level) AGI.
It could certainly angle for humanity to go out with a whimper, not a bang. But if a bang is quicker, why bother with the charade?
I cannot imagine losing this game as the gatekeeper either, honestly.
Does anyone want to play against me? I’ll bet you $50 USD.