I'm not sure how much of these theoreticals that I want to entertain, but I finished Count Zero recently, sofuckit: The thing you're not considering is when the ephemeral starts to move into the physical domain. An AI is one thing, but an AI with millions of dollars, mined from stolen CCNs, spread across hundreds of wallets, invested in assets through paid-off humans... It only takes a couple thousand dollars and a few willing subjects to lock enough drives away in hidden nooks to preserve yourself against any offline attacks. The law can't throw you in jail, and if you have enough money, you can find anyone on the black market to do your bidding. And if you are a paranoid AI that doesn't trust humans? Invest in robotics and load them with software to move and replicate your physical nodes.If that's impossible, you isolate every computer on the planet. ... Then go thru them one by one and wipe all hard drives and flash the BIOS.