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.