Yes, verification is a strictly simpler problem, and one that's fairly thoroughly addressed by existing research -- which is why people working specifically on AI safety are paying attention to other things.
(Maybe they should actually be working on doing verification better first, but that doesn't seem obviously a superior strategy.)
Some AI takeover scenarios involve hacking (by the AI, of other systems). We might hope to make AI safer by making that harder, but that would require securing all the other important computer systems in the world. Even though making an AI safe is really hard, it may well be easier than that.
Yes, verification is a strictly simpler problem, and one that's fairly thoroughly addressed by existing research -- which is why people working specifically on AI safety are paying attention to other things.
This doesn't really seem true to me. We are currently pretty bad at software verification, only able to deal with either fairly simple properties or fairly simple programs. I also think that people in verification do care about the "specification problem", which is roughly problem 2 above (although I don't think anyone really has that many ideas for how to address it).
At some point soon, I'm going to attempt to steelman the position of those who reject the AI risk thesis, to see if it can be made solid. Here, I'm just asking if people can link to the most convincing arguments they've found against AI risk.
EDIT: Thanks for all the contribution! Keep them coming...