I'd guess it's because pipewire needs to access real-time capabilities of the kernel to enable low-latency audio, and those are only accessible as root sadly AF

I'd guess it's because pipewire needs to access real-time capabilities of the kernel to enable low-latency audio, and those are only accessible as root sadly AFAIK (thus polkit, because pipewire does not run as root so there has to be something to grant the capacity to pw)