Tim’s Razor:

When government is the actor, Hanlon’s Razor is inverted.

I’m not being cute. I’m totally serious. Government incompetence is a feature not a bug. It’s ready cover for misdeeds. It’s invoked literally every time. We always hear, “mistakes were made.” As sentence without a subject. Maybe, only maybe, some low-level flunky gets put on leave or (gasp) fired.

And it’s always believed immediately because it’s always plausible.

But government does not deserve the benefit of the doubt. We must start with the base assumption it’s malice and start asking, cui bono. Proponents of incompetence theory deserve the full burden of proof here.

You’ve admirably taken on that burden, but you do not persuade. Your whole theory is based on the perspective of one insider on how things work. But I’m guessing you haven’t look very hard for insiders with a different perspectives, which likely abound. Your case relies on us assuming the whole thing is always a shit show with massive QA holes. Plausible yes. But I’m not convinced. This is basically “you had one job” level incompetence.