[motohagiography]

Well, if you're talking about releasing something that wrecks economies and destroys societies and cultures, yet leaving them intact for occupation, value extraction, and management as vassals, I'm not sure you'd need something that large and energy intensive. But that's technology we or our adversaries just don't have, so it probably isn't a threat.

[...]

[gremlinsinc]

no, but you'd want it to be something that doesn't bring 'nukes' to the table, because that's total destruction of everything. Plus the people will love you if you just feed them..those who don't starve first.... It'd be an easy way to lay waste to an entire country's gdp, and I don't think it'd even be costly. Tiny drones (once developed) could be deployed fairly cheaply, I'd imagine. They'd land like a little butterfly, wings would be a solar panel awaiting command to do w/e they're planned to do, or just create a wire-mesh network of listening devices to spy near/far...

I've wanted to write a sci-fi novels along these lines...except America is in civil war, and hacktivist freedom fighters use drones to essentially fight back against the rogue fascist govt that's taken over.