or the achievements of the thousands of people who worked on ML before him to help set the stage.

I've worked with a wide range of brilliant people of various ages in my life. Nothing I've seen about these kids makes me think they are significantly smarter than the somewhat-above-average folks I've worked with. Historically, the government has hired people like this (for example the NSA pulls in some number of mathematically inclined graduates every year; NIH has brilliant interns, etc, etc).

And none of these kids skills mean they are particularly well suited to the subtle job of reforming the establishment.