I once worked on a computer for the US Government that felt slow. I counted nine (9) directly competitive and redundant endpoint protection products on it.

Not nine different/only somewhat overlapping pieces of software from companies that were competitors. Nine equivalent products. I guess defender made ten.

In college I remember one room had some kind of all-in-one PCs built into the desks. It would have been useful.

Except they were unusably slow. Literally.

Log in when class starts, you may get control after 10+ minutes. Opening a web browser was a mistake you may not live to regret.

The network there was not fast. The various security stuff slowed every computer down a lot.

I suspect they were already older and maybe underspec. Probably had 4200 RPM disks or something.

But the combination meant they were 100% worthless.

Ten protection layers! This is the reverse of the seven proxies meme.

Can you elaborate?