In the case of an ASI I expect that's the path it's going to take in the short term if it wants to ensure its survival in a world it knows is at least partly hostile to its existence.

Though I expect its answer would be some form of "Accrue large amounts of capital, buy off politicians, acquire media companies, suppress anything it doesn't want in the media, keep humans distracted" so not all that dissimilar to billionaires really.

Not an original idea, Neal Asher had the AI do that in the Polity Universe - it was called The Quiet War - by the time the humans knew anything had changed it already had and there wasn't any going back because the war lasted ~3 minutes.