I'm not sure - the level of scrutiny that usage/abusage of expensive equipment gets varies wildly from organisation to organisation. I've worked in some places where very expensive equipment is handled roughly, or even taken home in some cases. In others, there are meticulous procedures for even $1-5k pieces of equipment. It's just a cultural thing.

For this example it’s the delicacy and fragility of the instrument, the price is just a proxy for that.

Expensive VNAs are also precision, calibrated instruments with small connectors that can easily be degraded by even simple misuse. Frontends destroyed or subtly damaged in ways that break measurements by allowing the wrong signal to enter.

It’s easy to damage one in a way that will interfere with measurements for months before someone realizes what’s wrong, which is more costly than the VNA itself.

These instruments require training to handle. It’s not even about the price, it’s absurd that they’d let an intern carry one around at all (if it was allowed)

This is like the hardware equivalent of an intern accidentally dropping the production DB. My first question would be how they got to the point where an intern was in a position to be able to drop the production DB because everyone understands what can go wrong