OK, I’ll grant that. But I think it’s safe to say that this is not a well-thought out strategy by the US government — “We’ll keep using 8” drives! Overtime, they will be uncommon because they are so inferior! But we’ll keep using them! Because then our resilience against hackers will increase!!”
No. The government continues to use 8” floppies because it is lazy and stupid.
I can’t argue with that.
I think they are used because it would require replacement of their entire system. I suspect that the system is a mini-computer like a PDP-11, PDP-8, or any one of hundreds of systems that used 8” floppies. This is a safe bet because 8” floppies have never been supported on PCs or other more modern machines.