Average ops have never been less capable and adverse to programming than now. The problem is getting worse, not better. I know because I am in ops and one of the few who loves to code and accidentally entered the field

No way. I have worked in ops for 20 years now; almost everyone knows how to code. Some enjoy it and some don't, but people are capable of it and will do it when needed.

I think that any kind of “modern ops” necessarily includes coding, even if there isn’t a ton of Python or Rust being generated as part of the workflow.

Kubernetes deployment configurations and Ansible playbooks are code. PromQL is code. Dockerfiles and cloud-init scripts are code. Terraform HCL is code.

It’s all code I personally hate writing, but that doesn’t make it less valid “software development” than (say) writing React code.

But the same is true of devs. Many of them are pretty clueless about coding. It's a whole generation of "bootcamp people" who were designers or bartenders and heard there were more lucrative jobs.