> Two years later, the client canceled the two-years-late project before it ever launched. They ate a $60M loss.

You could say that the customer got exactly what they paid for. The customer lacked the ability pay in terms of specifications, so what they got was what $60M and a half-hearted attempt to articulate what they needed could buy.

On the other hand, the customer never knows what they want. You could say that's the job of the software company - to slog through the mountain of feature requests disguised as specifications to arrive at a system that will actually solve the customer's real problem.