[cba9]

> The article is not well written, and I personally had to parse it several times to figure out what he was trying to say. I'm still not even sure if this is the correct interpretation.

I thought it was perfectly clear. He was telling a funny story about how systems and technologies evolve, giving two examples of that (latter, the watch, former, the system's airgap springing a leak), and furnishing an object lesson in the need for regular thorough audits to ensure that systems and controls thereof are still in place and still working the way that the owners think it's working.

> A facility like the one he described should have had regular security audits to verify that no hard lines were placed where they should not be.

Exactly. In fact, I believe at the time he wrote this blog post, OP was an active auditor for BDO. In some of his other posts, he analyzes observations he made while auditing a variety of companies/organizations; unsurprisingly standards across the board are very poor. He would be the first to say that this sort of thing is what an audit should prevent and why audits are needed (although I'm not sure I agree with his venom against pentesting; which I see analogous to fuzzing).