If by "basement" you mean "anywhere, working in the interests of any organization that wants to gain a technology advantage over the rest of the world," then sure, I agree that this is a good question. So what do you think the answer is?
I have no idea! I am not a specialist of any kind in AI development. That is why I posted in the Stupid Questions thread asking "has MIRI considered this and made a careful analysis?" instead of making a top-level post saying "MIRI should be doing this". It may seem that in the subthread I am actively arguing for strategy (b), but what I am doing is pushing back against what I see as insufficient answers on such an important question.
So... what do you think the answer is?
r/Fitness does a weekly "Moronic Monday", a judgment-free thread where people can ask questions that they would ordinarily feel embarrassed for not knowing the answer to. I thought this seemed like a useful thing to have here - after all, the concepts discussed on LessWrong are probably at least a little harder to grasp than those of weightlifting. Plus, I have a few stupid questions of my own, so it doesn't seem unreasonable that other people might as well.