There are the obvious ones, which relate to medium scale disasters that could annihilate a single arcology, and if an alien civilization concentrated its population in one, because they were so reduced in population that's all that was needed, it would mean the end of them. There should not be any surprises left in their solar system, meaning they know where all the asteroids are and their orbits, they know where all the subterranean faults are, they understand the risk of tsunamis and don't take that risk, and the same for anything else that happens on their planet, like hurricanes. With no surprises left, and a choice about where to site their single arcology, is there really any vulnerability?
Obviously, if they didn't know these things, it would be premature to reduce population to that level, so for the sake of the argument, figure they do know them and there is no geology left undone. On the psychology side, is there any risk in the slightest degree from one of them becoming psychopathic, and attempting to sabotage an essential system? Again, they are long past asymptotic technology, which includes psychology, so this is not really possible. Furthermore, the genetics grand transformation has given them all good genes and they also understand how to raise youngsters to be stable contributors to the society. They have to go way back to find in their ancient history a time when there was war and dissent, as every alien is rational and logical, and politics is a solid science now, so no reputable alien could raise objections to the way things are done. Technology simply brings calmness to everything it touches. Thus, an alien who had a passing thought about being a saboteur would simply recall that there are no political systems better than the one they have, maybe for tens of thousands of years, and as far as there still exists the abstract concept of justice, they have it.
There would be robots to fill all appropriate roles, and intellos, the biological equivalent of a robot, filling ones where they would be more efficient. Someone eons ago would have figured out how to keep everyone busy and interested, in who knows what, so there would not be any bored malcontents. Technology simply solves problems, one after another, until there are no more. If an alien civilization gets to this state, they can stay in it for as many thousands of years as they want, providing resources are sufficient and their star doesn't get nasty.
It would be hard for them to think of any vulnerabilities they have, or might have in the next millennia, as they have solved those problems already, except for one.
Aliens.
Not the aliens themselves, but aliens of a different sort from a different solar system. Aliens 1 and aliens 2, for convenience. If aliens 2 began traveling in space before they had reached asymptotic technology, or made the deliberate choice to avoid the calming effect it has, they might be going to another solar system with an open mind about annihilating whatever was living there and taking over the planet. This assumes there are two planets with life on them at some reasonably close distance, which could be unlikely or likely – we don't quite know that yet. So aliens 1 might be aware that there are other solar systems nearby them with planets which could have given rise to life, and they were old enough to have evolved a civilization.
One question we haven't resolved yet is could one alien civilization detect another, and how many light years away could this be done. If the answer to the question is that it would be too impractical to do this, or the engineering of the sensors to scan all the solar systems around them cannot be done, meaning there is some limit to what can be detected that we on Earth haven't figured out, and the aliens 1 have figured it out and there is no way around the limit, then they have an indeterminate risk. No telescope, no matter how big, can see finely enough to pinpont the signature of an advanced civilization, and certainly not enough to tell what stage it is in.
This means that the High Council of Alien World 1 can be sitting around thinking of how low a population they want to design for, and they have no way of determining if another alien civilization, aliens 2, is nearby and if they are going to be totally peaceful, or if they mastered space flight before mastering their own psychology, politics, economics, and a few other topics. And they have only their own history to guide them. They got super peaceful and would certainly not try and take over another civilization's world, but their ancient, ancient history says they weren't always this way. And they see a way that star travel could have been invented early on, if there was some motivation to steer technology development that way.
Naturally, they can come up with a master list of every way some alien 2 civilization could try and displace them from their own planet, and from this list, look for ways where having a low population, concentrated in one arcology at the extreme, would make them more vulnerable. Their first conclusion would be that it is very difficult to undertake such a offensive mission, and probably no alien civilization would want to spend that much resources on doing it. Then they might consult the alien 1 who was the most interested in ancient history, and ask him if any faction in ancient alien world 1 had ever chosen to spend some large fraction of their resouces on attacking another faction in a different region. If their history is anything like Earth's, the answer is: most of them did.
Perhaps there is something inevitable in the evolution of thinking beings that forces them through a period of time in which military adventures dominate their history. Or perhaps only a few worlds have such an period. But, if aliens 1 decide that somewhere in the near parts of the galaxy, aliens 2 are building some armada pointing in their direction, then they have a completely new basis for deciding on how much population they want to have.
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