NSA has been working hard to shift some of the culture of bureaucracy. They realize that opening certain parts of their toolchain will allow then to find candidates with experience before they apply. Ghidra, an open sourced reverse engineering tool, has become a very popular disassembler. It's nice to see this shift in culture, especially from a black box agency like the NSA.
did they stop putting backdoors into software/hardware and collecting zero day exploits instead of sharing them?
NSA is led by a four-star flag officer.
They are a component of the military.
Them giving up backdoors and zero-days would be like the Air Force giving up airplanes.
So basically they’re committed to a strategy that is not helping. They can never be a partner in security while they actively work to secretly subvert security.