Let us separate the various aspects of this saga. During product development, there are many stages, There is the request for help (determination of need), understanding the requirements, then there is a design and development of a solution on the drawing board, then there is a testing and validation of the drawing board solution, then building the actual solution. Finally is the executing the solution, which is the proof of the pudding, does the drawing board solution work in real operating conditions? This is a part of the product development life cycle and I am simplifying it a lot. Usually there is a lot of validation steps to ensure there requirements traceability, that the solution can be mapped to the requirements.
Let us look at what happened here. A need was recognized and a solution was developed rather quickly. My understanding (I could be wrong) was that no one involved in cave diving or with actual knowledge of the topology was involved in the design. Hence the developed solution was not feasible and would not meet the immediate need. This happens all the time that the first idea does not work and and often needs going back to the drawing board. Usually there are intermediate check points to ensure you do not wait till the end to discover that solution does not work, and this allows for course correction. It appears here that best practices were not followed (lack of time is not a good reason) and there was no solution validation with experts in the field. I think we can all reasonably agree that the solution developed was not appropriate to that need. Could a better solution have developed, given time? Possibly, but we are now discussing the solution that was developed and its appropriateness.
If Elon Musk acknowledged that they were not right in their design and said something like this, "People asked me for help and we tried out best. Unfortunately, our solution did not work, but we are glad other plans worked"", he would have come out smelling like roses. Instead here are the optics. He came up with a half baked solution that did not seem to be geared towards the requirements, flew over to Thailand and projected a stance that he had answers that others did not. When he was criticized, he went on a rampage against the critics, even bringing up irrelevant and untrue allegations, that had nothing to do with the solution.
I have no idea what his intent was, all I know was that whatever good image he wanted to create did not come to fruition. He allowed himself to be painted as a gold digger by his own actions, not due to a smear campaign. I am trying to be objective and factual.
