Is it ethical to work on general-purpose robots given the risk of cyberhacking?

A researcher questions the ethics of developing general-purpose robots due to the risk of cyberhacking enabling totalitarian regimes. The AI safety community has largely overlooked this risk, focusing instead on autonomous weapons. The researcher seeks resources and discussion on whether working on general-purpose robotics is ethical given the potential for mass hacking.

One potential risk of developing general-purpose robots is that they could greatly reduce the friction required to establish a totalitarian regime. If there were millions+ of general-purpose robots deployed in the world, and someone were able to hack / take control of a large fraction of them, they could easily create a repressive state. When I tried to find mainstream assessments of this risk pathway online, however, I found very little; there is some discussion of the ethics of developing autonomous lethal weapons, but none on the ethics of developing general-purpose robots more broadly. For this reason, I was wondering whether anyone knows: i what the mainstream AI safety community’s view on this issue is — that is, whether the cyberhacking of general-purpose robots is considered a serious risk -- and if so, whether it is ethical to work on general-purpose robotics; and ii any good online discussions that examine this specific issue? More generally, I feel like there has been relatively little discussion in the AI safety community about the ethics of working on robotics, so any relevant resources would be deeply appreciated.