Fortunately for an AI drone swarm to be as destructive as a decent sized nuke, you would need millions of them. Unfortunately an AI drone swarm can be less destructive than a nuke. It could kill all the people in a city but leave infrastructure completely intact for the attackers to use. This future is not here yet but is coming and it is good people are starting to talk about it.

Do you need that size of destruction to keep people from leaving their homes? Or just the fear that rogue autonomous drones are flying around with a .22 mag attached? Wouldn't there be some economic impact from such a scenario?

Maybe for some small period of time, but not for long. Americans, and I think people in general, can be quite adaptive. In Texas enough people would just start carrying around shotguns for the chance to be the one to shoot it out of the sky. In San Francisco, who knows, maybe some counter drone tech would be quickly developed. A large society can absorb hundreds of deaths a day without too many problems if it knows the problem is not going to escalate exponentially.

Perhaps you are right. Texas certainly would adapt rather quick.

That said, some cities are already so messed up, that cops won't respond to 911 calls in some areas. I would expect that to get worse should there ever be "thugs with drones".

> all that is needed to make a drone is a 3d printer, common industrial components and software.

This could only happen in a very distant future. As it stands, firing a gun from a 3D printed drone would make it fall out of the sky. Even if it didn’t, it would be laughably inaccurate. Even still, they could be easily defeated with a birdshot.