Maybe they could just use laptops with removable storage then.

large corps are dumping 3000 M1 Macs?

No idea, but that's what the person who's complaining about the security measures in the article seems to claim.

I find it hard to believe that corporations with this volume of (short term!) device turnover don't have basic device management in place, and the staff to operate it. Managed Apple devices are enrolled during prestage, which means the administrating account is able to unlock them independent of the employee Apple ID.

You would need a combination of very high cashflow and lax/incompetent device management, plus a direct contact that grabs large amounts of these "used" computers without applying the most basic of processes for making sure the devices being repurposed can be, well, repurposed.

I want to have good faith, but this sounds a lot like "thousands of quasi-new, pricey laptops are sold to us with a 'former corporate owner' that mysteriously doesn't answer phone or email, and we would like to act like they're ours now."

It seems like this is an issue only if your business plan is to squint very hard every time you look at the source for the "used" laptops you're buying.