Space elevators on a inhabited world seem like a terrible idea though. One terrorist attack and you have a giant rope that will wrap around the world twice, through lots of heavily populated areas. I can see one going from the moon towards the earth though.
I mean like you could do 10x the damage by just redirecting an asteroid or even just gunning it with a fairly aerodynamic ship, its fantasy
But also the ideal elavator would have to be lightweight anyways so eith gravity it wouldnt work against itself, and therefore pretty easily able to burn up in the atmosphere (maximized surface area with the small size).
Also they wouldn’t have to be that long, a stable orbit isn’t super high up there - more like 100km or so.
And then again all this was about desolate planets in the first place
Space elevators need to have the majority of their mass higher than geostationary orbit to hold it up, which is 22000 miles above the earth. So I suppose it wouldn’t wrap around the planet more than once. And while true you can do more damage with an asteroid, it would be a far easier target for a terrorist group than something that far away.