But if you had a wise single form (?) then certainly you could imagine us plotting a very safe course

Wise singleton, perhaps?

The implication is that if you have a bunch of different agents going their own ways with no powerful agreement between them, then any one of them might change into something potentially dangerous to all of them; but if there's initially a single agent or some way for all agents to coordinate, then they can put into place strong enough safeguards to avoid those problems...

P.S. A thousand thanks for doing this!