I freely admit there are ethical issues with a secret assassination programme. But what's wrong with lobbying politicians to retard the progress of unFriendly AI projects, regulate AI, etc? You could easily persuade conservatives to pretend to be scared about human-level AI on theological/moral/job-preservation grounds. Why not start shaping the debate and pushing the Overton window now?

I do understand what SIAI argues what an unFriendly intelligence would do if programmed to maximize some financial metric. I just don't believe that a corporation in a position to deploy a super-AI would understand or heed SIAI's argument. After all, corporations maximise short-term profit against their long-term interests all the time - a topical example is News International.