I've been occasionally peeking through these threads with the subject matter to see if we have any word of when the button might be added to the game.
Yeah, same here.
It would be nice to see it as a hotfix during the first week after their vacation ends, which would be what... the week of August 7th? But if it causes any follow-on effects that need balancing, or if they want to roll it into adding even more features for control of sector AI (which I think we'd all want, yes?), then it might not show up until the big Heinlein patch. That's probably end of August or early September, I'm guessing.