Space Monsters!!!

[Suicide Junkie]

1: Everything you can possibly do politically (even nothing?) increases their anger towards you. No prob.
2: AIs naturally expand. They won't focus on adding territory, since they will attack any ships they see, but you don't want them expanding too fast.
3: Not gonna happen. Unfortunately, the soylent green facilities were tried and failed. They're gonna be building Farms on their invisible planets just like everybody else.
4: Super-organic tech. Organic + P&N "Living ships" at the very least. Add organic engines and electronics, and you'll be set.
5: Make swarm spores (colony ships) have a max of zero engines, with a built-in 1 standard movement point. They cannot be disabled .
6: Add it to the hulls. They should be very vulnerable to psychic sensors, but average against Grav & temporal, and strong against EM.
7: I don't think AIs handle mobile constrution ships very well. I could be wrong though. They can always use their planet-based hives to produce ships.
8: Not a problem. Dogscoff and his Space vikings should be able to give some pointers.