I can explain it to you but I can't understand it for you.

I've tried to show you how jawboning works, but you're still steeped in a mindset where the government "undeniably" coerces through legislation and regulation.

> I'm sure there are plenty of instances where consultants and contractors have been required to use C or C++ because it's written into hundreds of thousands of pages of antiquated government contracts

Could you show some instances of these contracts? That's on you, I can't prove a negative.

You're imagining that there must be legislation requiring C++ and therefore it's impossible to get a change away from C++ by just talking.

> there's going to be an army of lobbyists ready to carve out a waiver system, render any hope of improving software quality moot.

Now you're beginning to understand why they didn't go with a coercive law or regulation. When people are coerced, they demand carve outs. When you ask nicely, like the White House have here, they may consider it. And there's nothing wrong with carve outs per se. For example, thousands of ships/planes and other systems are going to use Sqlite as their database and that's written in C. No sense in demanding a database in Rust because frankly, Sqlite is proven software, deploying on billions of devices in use today. It deserves a carve out.

> Without clear objective success criterion defined by the government, the problem will persist indefinitely.

Why would you think this is the last you're ever hearing of this? This problem would take a decade to solve, at the most optimistic. Why are you demanding a perfect solution on day one? All they've done so far is pointing out ways the industry can do better. Maybe next year they change the procurement criteria for some defence contracts. Maybe the year after that they change the procurement criteria for all government contracts. They can try different things, iterate on them.

They can look at the success of industry initiatives like https://memorysafety.org in a couple of years and see if that's something they should invest in themselves.

> It seems like focusing on small software shops still writing C++89 code would be better thing to focus mental energy on. Are there any examples of those kind of businesses using this WH report to steer their roadmaps or technology directions?

Are you asking if there are some small shops who have responded to this 3 week old report, completely changed the direction of their business and published a report about it? Even if they had, how would I have heard about it? Google's report reached the front page of HN and that's where I saw it, a small company would struggle to reach that kind of exposure.

Your clear distrust of government makes you unable to see that what they've done is a small, effective step in the long march towards improving software security. That's why you set impossible standards for them ("objective success criterion", "proof of small shops adopting it") and then immediately think you're correct when you see they fail to meet those standards. I can't change how you feel about government, so there's not much left to say. If you feel your "undeniable" points haven't been addressed, I'm not going to attempt it again.