Apple puts effort into making you go to them for repair parts. Any deterrence against thieves is simply a fringe benefit. Don't credit them for something that isn't actually their goal.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the original impetus for this variety of security was a prompt like “what are some objectives that support us creating vendor lock in” - that’s how organizations end up with multiple interconnected objectives
Being able to see Apple’s warning on the iPhone 11 and up "Unable to verify this iPhone has a genuine Apple display” meant we were able to find a phone which was still stock.
I’m a big proponent of the right to repair but in this case Apple’s repair deterrence feature had a big benefit for us.
Meanwhile there's massive amount of low-quality parts i have to wade through when wanting to order a replacement battery.