So, now that Political Operative is out, this card is dead, right?

PolOp costs the same to install. PolOp is 1 influence. PolOp is not limited to what it can and cannot trash. PolOp can be used at instant speed (e.g. run HQ, install PolOp, immediately trash JHow and raid archives). PolOp threatens the kill with a single HQ run, not an HQ run on the turn you use it.

That being said, this does have the advantage of working on Caprice Nisei and Chairman Hiro in Industrial Genomics: Growing Solutions, no matter how loaded archives is. I can't really think of any other reasonable cases where the trash cost of something would be so high that it's worth 3 clicks.

Probably not worth using unless you are making a theme deck. The flavor of having Chaos Theory: Wünderkind go clubbing at Wyldside, do a bunch of drugs (Stimhack), pay her Drug Dealer, and shoot someone in the face is certainly appealing.

This seems pretty playable out of Armand "Geist" Walker: Tech Lord plus Tech Trader - based decks. It powers up Technical Writers, and be trashed at any time as long as there is some ice (it doesn't say "choose an unrezzed piece of ice") for an emergency draw + credits from whatever traders you have out.

If you're going full jank, this can also be instant-installed in bulk with Replicator and Bazaar.