Anecdata: while i was in a tiny tiny software company, we got an in at a large auto manufacturer. They said they had been trying to get someone to do that job for like 2 years.

The job was of the 'two people 3 months' magnitude. The procurement system was also of the 'two people 3 months' magnitude so we simply gave up.

In the article's case, they could have done this even before coding assistants. It would have cost the estimated 5 million instead of 850k, but that's still 10x less than the 54 million.

As flawed as this new approach might turn out to be, the traditional approach may (or may not) have an even worse probability of success.