Nation-state is often used in a different sense to distinguish the participants in the Westphalian system of sovereignty from other entities that might be labelled nations and/or states; this use derives in part from the fact that the Westphalian system is itself considered the turning point to nation-states (in the sense the parent describes) as a general norm, and that the participants in that system are generally also nation-states in that primary sense. (While “state” alone is often used for this where context makes it clear that this sense of “state” it s intended, there are lots of other uses of “state”—particularly for subordinate units of certain Westphalian sovereigns—which can create ambiguity, and “Westphalian sovereign” is a lot more cumbersome than “nation-state”.)
But the Westphalian system explicitly emphasizes the importance of the boundaries of the state vs the size of those boundaries. The HN usage tends to imply that “nation state” is something particularly impressive. But “an attack by a San Marino-level agency” doesn’t convey that same level of impressiveness.
Yeah, in security, “nation-state level actor” is used to mean “the most capable category of attackers, most (all?) of whom are particularly powerful nation-states [0]”, not “attacker at the level of at least the least-capable nation-state”.
