I do find it a bit funny that their adblock-block is to my knowledge just client side JavaScript. Ya' know, the kinda stuff adblock is built to cutout.
Unless they're going to be splicing up videos to put the ads into the same file (which would be astronomically resource intensive) or only allow YouTube in app and in seriously locked down Web-Environtment-Integrity browsers it'll be impossible prevent a device from running or not running code as the user see's fit.
only allow YouTube in app and in seriously locked down Web-Environtment-Integrity browsers
This is exactly what they want. Remember their github with the OS integrity authentication service? They're already there with phones and Chromebooks,, now they have to control PCs.
This is correct, and uBlock Origin has already received an update that works around the popup.
This is a game of cat and mouse that Google simply can't win. I'm fairly certain they'll add native code in Chrome for detecting ad blockers within the next 12 months.
I can also see a world in which they eventually block third party browsers from accessing it too. Even then there will still always be ways of working around it like revanced, custom chromium builds and so on.