So if I understood correctly, you just said a few nodes can stage a 51% attack with a lot less bad apples in the team than it typically is needed from potentially thousands if miners (aka a couple of pool owners). Correct?
Fairly sure that is
not what I stated, but feel free to expand on why it led you to that conclusion.
From my understanding and current code layout, concentrated "attack" on ARO in this fashion would just lead to legitimate, non-participatory nodes having a very large blacklist locally as none of the blocks from the bad apple nodes would be accepted, whether solo mined, mined on "bad" pools, or any other fashion. It'd behave more like a fork, with a segment of the network hashing away on a blockchain now totally disconnected from the rest of the network. "Good" miners on this "attack" fork would get all their nonces rejected on the "bad" pools; all the "Bad" miners on this "attack" fork would get all their nonces rejected on the "good" pools.
It would be easy to spot, and for owners of nodes that care, easy to bypass. It would not be possible in this fashion to "subvert" the legitimate network nodes.