[lamontcg]

The first most obvious state actor would actually be the USA itself. Some sort of red team test to demonstrate our own vulnerabilities and to secure that funding.

It probably wouldn't be necessary for someone like China to actually stage a demonstration, since its easier for China to just have some high up diplomat get themselves drunk and boast to or around a known CIA operative that they have hundreds of drones ready to strike facilities in the USA that can be activated on a moments notice. Then leave just enough of a paper trail lying around in other places to validate it (although probably a dozen or less, not a hundred), without compromising anything. Maybe even go so far to have a private military briefing (that a CIA operative was invited to) which displayed a particular model of drone built using off-the-shelf parts that could be acquired in the US ("we built this on our soil, we could be building another one very much like it on your soil").

[openasocket]

So a lot of people are posting something about a red team test or some defense contractor. But is that really something a defense contractor would do? This thing violated federal and most likely state regulations in a bunch of different ways, there are serious consequences to this. I mean this isn't the days of MKUltra, are there any contemporary or recent examples of defense contractors blatantly violating regulations like this without consequence?

[lamontcg]

It would need to be something like being authorized by a joint task force between the Pentagon and the FBI, not just a defense contractor gone rogue.