Linux "intenionally bad patches" scandal

As this was reportedly done by a machine, there was obviously no intent involved at all, hence, bringing this up is a red herring. But the whole point of this kind of "security testing" is to determine if it's possible to mislead humans in this way. Further, this only went public because it reportedly failed. We don't know what would have happened had it succeeded and we have only the word of the people who wrote the report that it wasn't meant to succeed.