They could be but if network connection was a prime cause Microsoft would have highlighted that fact. Have they shown that is in fact the primary issue?
$5.4 billion is indeed a huge number but gives no information as to the availability of the $1.5 million. Without knowing what the cost is of what they must accomplish with the $5.4 billion no conclusions can be drawn.
I've had some experience dealing with the Weather Service when trying to develop a weather app using https://www.weather.gov/documentation/services-web-api#. It was a frustrating experience and my initial impulse was to vent about that. But I'm choosing not to do that mainly because it seemed at the time that every person that I dealt with at NWS was trying to do the best they could.
The situation that NWS is facing is basically that massive tax cuts coupled with growth in defense and social programs has left most other areas of the federal government hollowed out. The amount of money needed to fix the problem being discussed here is minimal but after decades of budget cuts across non-defense and non social-welfare programs there is simply little left to invest in improving services.
Over the years the problem hasn't been a shortage of revenue, its been runaway costs. Adding further revenue is just wasting more money. Cut the costs of an inefficient bureaucracy (the MTA) and bloated labor structure (the transit workers union) if you want to solve the problem.
It's also why I don't trust sales figures on individual products from companies with a portfolio. Sales tend to get credited to products that the company wants to show as gaining traction while really the favored product was an add-on to a bundle of established products that had their license renewed.
This highlights the commoditization of parts that will be part of EV market changes as well as the plug and play nature of EV assemblies. Massive changes to the current ways we build and maintain vehicles.
I think that they are trying to make the point that there are no laws regulating the use of facial recognition.
My experience is that most Americans think their privacy is protected; that deploying facial recognition software on them would be illegal. It's not. They're stating it so to overcome the public misconception.