I think you might be a bit hung up here on the word software which in your defence is not the correct word here.
Replace it with “operation” and it’s not at all a crazy number to suggest that an incredibly complicated multi year multi national intelligence operation to disrupt a covert nuclear weapons program inside of an actively hostile nation who have a serious counterintelligence and counter espionage apparatus ended up costing that amount.
You end up coming to the conclusion rather quickly that it’s actually great value for money.
While not at all about this particular operation but if you want to hear someone who actively ran another incredibly successful nuclear non proliferation operation inside of CIA I’d recommend checking out this interview with perhaps the “spookiest” CIA person I’ve ever seen https://www.youtube.com/live/AFnfTDbcPOA?
If a Payroll system can cost 2-3 billion (see phoenix Canada), which is basically a CRUD, ledger and business rules - something we’ve already done 1000s of times.
They probably add the costs of test equipment which I presume they had to procure and even destroy several times to make sure the virus worked.
