I thought exactly that, for the software developers. They may not have known what the ultimate aim was. But someone with managerial skin in the game decided, a

I thought exactly that, for the software developers. They may not have known what the ultimate aim was. But someone with managerial skin in the game decided, and it's hard to see someone up high enough to have that skin in the game being able to push their goals down to the developer. Which means there's at least a chain of people, and at each level there's probably a small number of peers who know what's going on. Someone decided, and needed help to get it pushed down to implementation. People who spec'd power requirements had a very good understanding of what's possible with power vs economy vs emission control. If they got the power they wanted, they must have known how they got it. There must have been a lot of people who either conspired or looked the other way.