> it's very likely a paid hit piece against bug bounty companies.

A thought on the incentives behind such a paid piece. There is a big free rider problem here. All pentesters, or all opponents of big bounty programs, would benefits equally from a hit piece, or to be more specific, would benefit proportionally to their market share. So suspicion on who would pay for a hit piece should fall mostly on entities who control a substantial portion of the market share, or some kind of lobbying organization/cartel representing multiple entities that add up to a substantial market share. Or some entity that makes a financially bad decision and ignores the free rider problem to fund the hit piece - but at that point, you don’t need the hit piece to be paid at all. It’s just ideologically motivated.