What is going on right now?

What's going on is that your org's management is filled with morons. This is not in your control, and there is nothing you can do about it other than moving out.

Sadly, this time the nonsense is colonising orgs that were too sensible to fall for the last round of tech-scamming (Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, NTFs etc).

I don't want to move again and it's a terrible time to try, partly because of this nonsense. So where we are.

^^ This right here. The reason this is happening is your senior leadership has decided this is how they want it to be. Vote with your feet.