This contract, with this much money, needed NASA levels of QA.

I cannot think of many code projects that have a higher value-per-line-of-code than this contract.

Sadly, it appears that not only was there not the needed QA but the leaders of this project were alerted to the exact problem in code 5 days ago and they responded by declaring that there was no risk.

The actual problem + the response makes this feel like amateur hour.

Now everyone involved understands why things that exist in 'old finance' like contracts and IPOs are scrutinized by large, expensive auditors.