First, there's hardly any evidence that these are anywhere near "brilliant engineers" let alone 1%. Their claims to "fame" were being interns or working on tightly scoped greenfield projects. Some might be interesting, sure. But it's hardly relevant to operating in a complex organization.

But more importantly, the real issue is regardless of how old they are an unelected individual is doling out hyper-privileged access to sensitive data to folks without any kind of oversight. It's a total mess.

It's hyperbolic to the n-th degree to call these "the best of nerds" as well.