Was there no other source for this story besides this piece of hyperbole? Everything is a "nightmare" and "chaos" with "victims" and phones sent to the "shredder". We shouldn't support this garbage writing.
That happened to a family member recently, I guess they were using face id regularly and changed their pin at one point and by the time they needed it again couldn't remember it.
The part that really pisses me off is the "10 strikes and we wipe your phone bit". That happened to me too on an infrequently used iphone last year. I'm pretty sure I would have remembered the password because it was one a few dozen pins I use, but I didn't get the chance to try all of them because the fscking phone decided to wipe itself first (not attached to icloud).
This is an optional setting, and I'm relatively certain it used to be off by default. I think my newest iPhone specifically prompted me about it during setup.