Hoba's plan was said to be diabolical because of the no-win situation, yes. Between lives or a hugely funded project, yes. That they can't do both, yes. Hoba wins whatever happens, yes. Those are all things that are in the movie and said quite clearly in the original Japanese version. We are made aware that Hoba had acknowledged this situation since he sources the story of Babylon as his inspiration, where the tower of Babel (the Ark) was destroyed by God (Hoba); the story of Babylon, as said in the film, also talks of destroying its people and the city (Babel), all of them "pure evil" for having tried to reach the heavens. (Otherwise known as modernization.)
To say that Hoba's reason for doing this was to give humanity or Tokyo a chance to redeem itself versus the dangers of modernizations goes against this definition. It is also not explicitly said to be the case in the film. Though Goto, in the original dub, goes off on a tangent and speaks of Hoba being confronted with what he felt was a harsh and impersonal city, he means to say that Hoba wanted its destruction; whether directly (labors running amok) or indirectly (stopping the most ambitiously funded project from panning out).
Hoba's plan was, indeed, diabolical, as either way, it causes a huge amount of destruction. To say that his plan was to have a bird in the sub-control room on the night of the typhoon as a way to have at least someone in the otherwise inexplicably* empty room who is ready, just at the right time, to destroy the tower is over-speculatory romanticism. Hoba was fine with either result.
* You might say, "he knew it was going to be empty because it was going to be the night of the Typhoon." Well, Occam's Razor. He would assume that the Ark was being destroyed by people who would already know of the sub-control room. Though this is speculation, it seems the more likely.
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