[bduerst]

That's based on the pretty big assumption that there's a lot of under-utilized hardware being slaved to some central government authority, which by definition it probably isn't.

I would bet more on cloud infrastructure providers being able to do better than nation-states in a CPU takeover of an ASIC-resistant network like Monero.

Motivations aside, it still comes down to cost though, and without any handwaving, Monero just isn't that important to take over.

[anonporridge]

I agree. If anything, a nation state would likely have to deputize AWS to run the attack.

But also, this would a purely destructive attack. A 51% attack isn't something that would ever allow a single entity to actually take control of the network, because you either a) obliterate public confidence and crash the value of the token, making mining a pure cost and the network worthless, or b) you incentivize the honest network participants to fork the network away from your computational dominance, leaving you with a ton of wasted money and possibly a worthless fleet of miners.