THE ALIENS
When the aliens finally invaded, it wasn’t the way most people had expected. There’s was no Independence Day shootout or War of the Worlds capitulation.
That’s not to say they were benign — far from it. I would describe them as indifferent, though I would not be surprised if some took pleasure in the suffering they inflicted.
They were interested in our resources, mainly the energy supply. And for that they needed us — at least some of us — to continue working and producing that energy. Of course, it was more complicated than that because they needed human consumers too to incentivize energy production. Just as we need bees to extract the nectar from flowers to make honey, they needed our machines and markets to consolidate the resources into a usable format.
Once the energy was sufficiently consolidated, they used an advanced technology to extract a small percentage of it. The amount was noticeable, but it disproportionately impacted the poor and powerless who didn’t know the cause and in any event lacked the resources to prevent it. It was a small, regular depletion, a rake off the top, so to speak...