How might a superintelligence technologically manipulate humans?

AlphaGo was connected to the Internet – why shouldn’t the first superintelligence be? This gives a sufficiently clever superintelligence the opportunity to manipulate world computer networks. For example, it might program a virus that will infect every computer in the world, causing them to fill their empty memory with partial copies of the superintelligence, which when networked together become full copies of the superintelligence. Now the superintelligence controls every computer in the world, including the ones that target nuclear weapons. At this point it can force humans to bargain with it, and part of that bargain might be enough resources to establish its own industrial base, and then we’re in humans vs. lions territory again.

Satoshi Nakamoto is a mysterious individual who posted a design for the Bitcoin currency system to a cryptography forum. The design was so brilliant that everyone started using it, and Nakamoto – who had made sure to accumulate his own store of the currency before releasing it to the public – became a multibillionaire.

In other words, somebody with no resources except the ability to make posts to Internet forums managed to leverage that into a multibillion dollar fortune – and he wasn’t even superintelligent. If Hitler is a lower-bound on how bad intelligent persuaders can be, Nakamoto should be a lower-bound on how bad intelligent programmers with Internet access can be.