Ok, so this would lead to restricting initial access to strong AI to a few well funded corporate and government groups.

Very briefly though, because it's way easier to leak code than to obtain source material and tools to weaponize a deadly virus.

The exact details on how to make a Thermonuclear weapon are classified, do you think that is done so improperly?

Are you comparing building a nuclear bomb to running a piece of code?

Well, it depends on the piece of code, doesn't it? How many people can actually run Google's search engine on their own hardware? Assuming they had access to the code.

See my response above.

We are talking about an actual AGI right which certainly has the potential to do damage comparable to Nuclear Weapons.

Let's say you need 1000 of p3.16xlarge instances to run it (that's 8k of V100 GPUs), that's $25,000/hour. So the launch price is within reach of most US programmers. After launch, a true AGI can probably find a way to stay "alive".