I see people usually use the term "premature optimisation" to mean "I wouldn't think about this thing, so no one should". Also people really take that one quote and consider it gospel, forgetting that "premature" is contextual and subjective.

Meanwhile I think it's a bit silly that they didn't have a plan B for 425 TiB (!) of data and are scrambling to figure it out now. It's not about "fixing problems that don't exist", it's called "planning ahead for a scenario that is practically guaranteed to happen" and has high risk for the future of the project if they don't have such a plan.

They created essentially a SPOF where "failure" was losing the financial goodwill with some company.