Wow, this was a very long post, which I skip for 95% of the times, But I read it. You really made it interesting. And that's a great achievement if a AI program communicated with other programmes, without notifying it's developers!!
As shown in the Atlas video, I don't think that Atlas would take the beating for too long. He is certainly going to react soon. You just can't kick him and hope that it won't retaliate!!!!