with the 1-month powerup

Very good point forgot about that one. Although someone who really wants to attack hive could create many accounts and power up less 1 million hive in each account. No one could see the attack coming if he powers up at a random frequency in many accounts during months.

Then he could suddenly censor key community leaders from the chain and communications would still disappear on chain. The good thing is that it's impossible to block communication between a community offline, it will never be too hard to talk outside of hive.

We could hardfork even without on chain communication imo, or with limited on chain communication. So that's not such a big problem.

Sure, you'll have whales that become consensus witnesses, which comes hand in hand with being a hardcore hiver and the means to back up what you believe

I completely agree with that and I welcome it. Although it means that it is possible we fall in the rich get richer problem, if those people start making bad decisions. They have a good track record for now and definitely don't seem greedy.

They put hive before their own interests, or at least it appears that way to me.

The ultimate solution to the rich get richer is forking whales out, or forking to a new blockchain where concerning whales get only half the coins they did before. Forking solves everything.

Hopefully the threat alone will always keep whales in check.