A high profile CISO doesn’t want some pretender to the throne making noise in another org.

This definitely sounds like office power politics dragged into the public square. One more reason to hate Twitter.

Or at least the users who conflate their being forced out with a lack of commitment to infosec

The NYT had been hiring like crazy for a few years. Given the financial state most of the traditional media is in, this looks more like plain old cost-cutting on intermediary management layers.

How do we know the stated reason is the real reason?

The one thing I don't see being raised anywhere is that it's incredibly common in civil society for folks who are "shrill" (supportive of equality for all races, gender identities, etc) tend to be pushed out for "lack of cultural fit".

One of the problems is that a lot of people who are nominally "supportive of equality for all races, gender identities, etc" are actually openly hostile to cishet white men with money.

I think it's possible to separate those two things and I have this hypothesis that you will get further if you are careful to do so and are less likely to be called "shrill" and pushed out.

The fact that the racist Sarah Jeong still works there weighs against this theory. The Times is depressingly “woke.”

This. The most likely scenario to me seems that NYT is seeing a very clear trend after several years of flaunting a complete lack of accountability, highly controversial (not in a good way) hires, and obscene levels of bias for "the newspaper of record".

Like most Leftist media agencies, it's probably seeing some tough times coming up, so it makes sense to cut costs in areas that are not attracting subscribers.