You don't understand. If they continued to hire based upon merit, they may accidentally end up with talent that resists accepting that money rules everything, and refuse to behave sufficiently submissive to those who have more of it than they do.
Hold your arm out in front of you.
Now think about lifting your arm.
Now actually lift your arm.
Consider the difference.
If you don't like it you must betray your country and your fellow citizens by helping Russia/China invade.
It will end as it always has, with idiots who play the games of money and power attempting to assert dominance over the entirety of the rest of the world, and learning the hard way that they've been following a fraud their entire lives.
Oh wait, they never learn.
The entire thing is, once again, showing the mindset of those who play the games of politics and money. Treating the entire world as an artificial machine that's supposed to produce numbers agreeable to themselves, to the extent that they entirely miss the vastly larger and more significant world underlying the successes in innovation they are attempting to digitize for automation.
Rich idiots to lose enough money that they actually feel compelled to touch grass.
Gonna be waiting a while.