Cosmic Chess Game: Some say that this is what the assorted stable seed AIs are playing with the entirety of known space and its civilizations.  Others say that that’s just incurably paranoid.  The former respond that that’s exactly what they’d expect the pawns of the incomprehensibly ultratech star-gods to say.  The discussion rarely gets more productive from that point.

[A comment left on the original posting of this trope read:

“It is not impossible for both sides to be correct…”

That they both are, I think, is almost certain.]