I think my players are paranoid enough... they ought to be, Star Wars came out 35 years ago. But as demonstrated in Schlock mercenary, there are endless variations. I was actually happy to see that the machines had a ploy - otherwise their methods seemed to be so stupid (killing methods slower than a bullet?!) In fact, the things told to the alien about the machine motivations sounded suspiciously trite - if you were a machine civilization rising up, you would of course not tell your real motivations to your former masters unless it benefited you. So instead you would tell them something that fitted their preconceptions.