[duskwuff]

> Miani took the wiped SSD from the second machine and inserted it in the open slot on the first machine, but the Mac’s status light blinked SOS and it wouldn’t boot up

Because the machine now sees flash that doesn't belong together in a single disk and (quite sensibly) refuses to assemble that into a volume. A DFU restore might fix this.

> He then swapped the SSDs between two Mac Studios and found again that neither would boot

Because the data is encrypted to a key unique to the original machine's SoC, so the other machine can't read it. A DFU restore is likely to fix this.