kinda bonkers that global software availability hangs on such a thing

If I read this right, it's literally just a USB stick that's broken, with no replacement in storage.

Data centre staff attempted reseating the signing key across available USB ports without success.

Lmao they literally just tried plugging it into different USB ports.

Little surprised they're not using an HSM to store the key. Suppose that could still suffer a hardware failure but probably a lot less likely.

sounds like me this past week when my external SSD decided to finally crap out on me. running around the house plugging it into multiple devices to make sure it was dead.