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Crypto can be effectively stopped - but it will take the application of violence. No one should be any illusion though - nation states who's cohesion is threatened (read : ability to raise tax) will not hesitate to use violence to preserve themselves.

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Would it not be easy for a state actor with a large amount of resorces be able to launch an attack on the network by providing most of the mining capacity for a short burst and effectively take control of the currency? I thought that was a thing.

Miners only control transaction inclusion/ordering. That's the only thing that a 51% attack will grant you. You still can't forge coins or make unauthorized transfers. You can do double spend attacks and tank the trust of the network, but I'm skeptical whether that's actually worth it. It's probably cheaper to send death squads to users/merchants/exchanges.

Tanking the network for the cost of some supercomputer time seems like a pretty good deal if you view it as an existential threat.

Bitcoin mining is so ASIC dominated that all the supercomputers on earth combined doesn't stand a chance.

Theoretically you could also halt all transfers by refusing to include any transactions.

Yup, nation states should apply violence to their own productive populations so they can collect tax in perpetuity from the dead bodies they leave in their wake.

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