This++. Even at large, serious organizations with certifications and important government contracts, there are inevitably dozens of people who are/were involve

This++. Even at large, serious organizations with certifications and important government contracts, there are inevitably dozens of people who are/were involved at various levels of the security infrastructure and who happen to know of some aspect of one of the "base turtles" that is secretly a shit show amounting to "this set of people is special." We used to like to play "where's the bullshit" in security design review, because you know there's always something in there with a big fat TBD at some level, and the folks who know what they're doing will readily own up to it and have a future plan for mitigation (often something which will always be a "future" plan). In my experience, the best designs are the ones that don't try to be 100% impossible to subvert, but at least can be audited. Meaning you may be able to come up with a way to push your code into the production line, but the stakes are high because you're probably gonna get caught after the fact.