Yes, well, there actually was a conspiracy here, wasn't there? The only question is how extensive it was in time and space.

I wonder if the fact they "had" to use a dependency and jump through a number of hoops suggest they're not involved in the conspiracy? As if they had this sort of access and effort surely systemd itself would be an easier target?

But that's not saying this is the only conspiracy, maybe there's hundreds of other similar things in published code right now, and one was noticed soon after introduction merely due to luck.