Recently a company I work with (but not for) announced a similar policy: everybody is required to be back in the office. Through informal conversations with two senior managers I know that this is effectively just a fishing expedition to reduce the amount of people that will be involuntarily laid off in the next round (here in Europe it's much less costly if they walk away on their own). Aside from the fact that this is a terrible way to make a selection (you will lose good employees), I find it also immoral to use a list of bullet points to justify the move when there is a totally different reason behind it.

During COVID I also saw a lot of middle managers nervously squeaking through the pandemic ('maybe all of those meetings COULD have been and email' syndrome), and now that it's possible to bring people back to the office there is lots of rationalization about why it's good and/or necessary to do so. When in reality their job depends on it, not the company's success.

I think if commute time was even partially employer-paid we would see a much more honest evaluation of the pros and cons of remote vs office-based work.