A SETI attack may be faster in terms of latency, but that doesn't matter unless the variance in development time is very low.
I think that you are understating the importance of latency. Earlier, in this post you pointed out some of the difficulties in a civilization 1480 ly away launching an attack on Earth's civilization due to the distances involved. It seems to me that a SETI attack would eliminate these difficulties; the attack could be launched with no knowledge of Earth or Earth's civilization whatsoever, so the attack would not have to wait 1400 years for our radio signals to bring us to the attention of a (hypothetical) advanced civilization. And, a SETI-type attack would not require expensive and time consuming vehicular scouting/probe missions.
Earlier, in this post you pointed out some of the difficulties in a civilization 1480 ly away launching an attack on Earth's civilization due to the distances involved.
I started that with the unrealistic assumption that the attacking civ is close to us in age. In that specific scenario the latency does matter and a photon attack has a potential niche. But that scenario is rare.
KIC 8462852, or the WTF (Where's the Flux?) star, is an F-type main sequence star about 1,480 ly away. It's a little larger and more massive than the sun, and a few times brighter. Age is uncertain, but probably older rather than younger.
Kepler observations over the last few years reveal very strange large and aperiodic flux variations (up to 20%) - of the general form predicted by some ETI megastructure models. However there doesn't appear to be any excess infrared.
The star's fluctuations were discovered by the PlanetHunters team. In the WTF paper they review a large number of unlikely natural explanations and settle on an unusual comet swarm as the most likely scenario.
Abstract of the WTF paper:
From "Comets or Aliens?", on the Planet Hunters blog: " However, so far over 100 professional scientists have had a look at the lightcurves and not managed to come up with a working solution."
In a another recent paper Jason Wright et al discusses the WTF star in more detail and critiques the comet theory.
The Search for Extraterrestial Civilizations with Large Energy Supplies. IV: the Signatures and Information Content of Transiting Megastructures:
Jason Wright discusses WTF here on his blog.
Big reddit discussion on r/askscience here.