I think it's less about using NPM as a good-practice model, and more just as an example of a widespread tool with worse flaws.

Not an excuse, just a comparison.

https://github.com/stripe/stripe-js strikes perhaps the most realistic balance possible, recognizing that NPM is an insecure place for their core JS logic that creates a PCI compliant iFrame, and so their NPM package is just a loader for a script tag hosted securely. And yet they encourage people to use NPM for the wrapper itself. Which is just as vulnerable to supply chain attacks as anything else on NPM. If this isn't tacit acknowledgement of a "new standard" I don't know what is. I absolutely agree that it's problematic.