  We explore the response of many-body localized (MBL) systems to periodic
driving of arbitrary amplitude, focusing on the rate at which they exchange
energy with the drive. To this end, we introduce an infinite-temperature
generalization of the effective "heating rate" in terms of the spread of a
random walk in energy space. We compute this heating rate numerically and
estimate it analytically in various regimes. When the drive amplitude is much
smaller than the frequency, this effective heating rate is given by linear
response theory with a coefficient that is proportional to the optical
conductivity; in the opposite limit, the response is nonlinear and the heating
rate is a nontrivial power-law of time. We discuss the mechanisms underlying
this crossover in the MBL phase, and comment on its implications for the
subdiffusive thermal phase near the MBL transition.
