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but it'd be much more effective to spend that money on lobbyists

Maybe, maybe not.

Lobbying is very expensive, I suspect some times it would be cheaper to lobby, other times it would be cheaper to sabotage the system.

Which is cheaper could depend on many things, like is anyone lobbying against you, vs. is the system designed in such a way that it could potentially adjust itself to defends itself or not.

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You'd be surprised at how cheap it is to buy a legislator in most cases.

Let's suppose that it is easy to buy a legislator. The problem here is that there's also lots of money being used to sway legislators towards increased security, so you'll be in a bidding war.

Care to elaborate on a few such cases?

Look at how much Hollywood paid to Lamar Smith for SOPA:

http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/industries.php?cycle=...

It looks like the going rate for a Congressman who is a powerful committee chair is around $100K.

A rank-and-file Congressman can usually be had for $10K or so.

It can be insanely profitable. NPR on how some lobbying efforts yield returns of 22,000 percent:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/01/06/144737864/forget-s...

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