Don't resort to acusations of ignorance just because you aren't making your point effectively. I have hands-on experience with every tool I've mentioned except

Don't resort to acusations of ignorance just because you aren't making your point effectively. I have hands-on experience with every tool I've mentioned except for k8s, which isn't being discussed in detail. I am under no illusions that the security profile of Salt vs Ansible is different. If that's all you're getting at, then fine, I concede, do your little victory lap. My point is and has been much broader: these tools solve the same class of problems which are symptoms of a broken culture, and solve them poorly. It's no surprise to me that any and all of them have problems, have had problems, and will have more problems - because they're broken by design, and they "solve" problems that we shouldn't have.