I try to reason myself that he's playing the long game and whatever but god damn it feels dirty.

There is and it's not quite at the level all these headlines are making it sound like. He says something like "daddy has to use his authority" or something like that. Still bad but these headlines make it sound like he was groveling in a gimp suit.

Is that even beta flight? Never seen it configured like this, I know that's what they were using at the beginning because that was basically the only FPV software available, but maybe they have a new "military-grade" one now?

Also it's interesting to see the different flying styles, some of them are like "let me carefully position myself slowly right next to this wing, yesss just right", meanwhile their buddy just flies full speed ahead straight into it.

It sounded to me like they were requirements to prevent snakes and spiders to crawl in from it.