Fluent English, shared cultural norms, and work culture vary wildly between countries.
The farther I’ve gone in my career, the more I’ve realized that “clean code” and “maintainable software” comes down to well written prose, in code.
Why do names authors pay US ghost writers when they could outsource to Brazil? The difference between “very proficient” in English and “fluent” is night and day.
Israelis aren't particularly fluent in English, more than others. Yet Israel is considered a great source of talent.
Indian people already have a hard time getting hired in your own country, you think your boomer boss is going to go out of his way to get them? I strongly doubt this.
Outsourcing has been tried for a long time, if it was a permanent solution it would have become the norm. Not to say that there is never a time for it, but software is, ironically, where I think it's the least likely to work out, precisely for the reasons you cited.
... software engineering history has been a lurching but ever more complete realization that the customer never knows exactly what they need ahead of time.
The work has to be well-defined and expectations clearly set, but we all know that it's rarely the case that the work is well-defined and that expectations are clearly set. What you end up with is an expensive disaster - and you can't correct from it either: you'll be black-listed in your community and people will be very leery of ever working for you again.
These lessons have been learned and re-learned for the past 30 years now - going back as far as Yourdon's Decline and Fall of the American Programmer - which was published in 1992.