> Can we stop bikeshedding and agree that telcos are critical infrastructure and need to be highly secure in general?

Yes, because the solutions to both are the same. Decentralized and trustless systems solve both problems is my opinion. I agree the pathway from where we are at now and there is complex, but it's not "bikeshedding" to believe there are fundamentally different and better ways to organize and secure a network that change the attack surface entirely.

(Think of IP layer being replaced with a PKI as a small example)