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It was an existing standard, already mass produced that was unencumbered, convenient, and sufficient.

Wired networking standardization tends to be lead by groups that want to use the technology and also sell it, rather than by groups that mostly want to sell it. There still were four competing 100M ethernet standards, and now a fifth 100Base-T1 has appeared (but targetting specific niches).

If all that changed between USB1.0 and USB 4 version 2 (or wtf it ends up being called) was twisting the pairs more (more or less), the cabling issues would be less too.