There's a big difference between "a little impedance" and "risks human life". War waged with robots will still cost money.
If politicians make bad decisions, perhaps you should try fixing that instead of sacrificing the lives of young men for a small chance of making those decisions more painful.
A lot of people make stupid cases. Should giving birth be dangerous so that people are reluctant to have unwanted children? Should sending email be dangerous so that people receive less viagra spam?
Sure, in theory, 1password MIGHT have better private auditing and review. But there's no reason to believe they do. To the contrary, when asked about open sourcing 1password, one of their developers explained that they don't do formal code review because it's too expensive, and that none of the external experts they consulted with have ever performed a full review.
Firstly, I said "perhaps deliberately, perhaps not" because I am not claiming that they intentionally wanted to provide security theater. I don't think that motive is relevant. I'm replying to a specific statement to explain that there is a benefit, even though it is intangible. Of course there are other bad effects, like inconvenience to travellers, and other good effects, like providing stable jobs to otherwise unemployably stupid Americans who live in or near airport-bearing cities.
In retrospect, I should have mentioned that last bit instead as a tangible benefit, but I only just now thought of it.
Calling it an illusion implies that air travel is not safe, when in fact it is very safe. However, people did not feel safe, so the government constructed an agency (perhaps deliberately, perhaps not) to provide security theater and help people feel safe.
In general, American citizens today are safe from terrorism. If anything, the greatest danger comes not from terrorists themselves but from the American peoples' unjustified fear of terrorism. We could use some more security theater.
I find it unlikely that consumers are as safety conscious as you imagine them to be. Think about how many people currently text or do other things to distract themselves while driving. They willingly choose less safety in order to be able to do something else while in transit. Pushing this behavior to its natural conclusion is what will allow self driving cars to be accepted even if they are 10% less safe than normal drivers.
Even if they had similar access, a leak is still dangerous because it allows them to behave as if they have the information without divulging as much about their own capabilities.
No matter how much social security is, some people will manage to spend so extravagantly that it is not enough. An anecdote of one such person is not very convincing.
For most of us with dependents, that's what private life insurance is for. The social safety net is for people too poor or irresponsible to have life insurance.
Hopefully it sounds like exactly what I said it was in the first sentence. The only part I could reasonably see as being called "speculative" is the second sentence of the first item, which is clearly marked as an inference.
If politicians make bad decisions, perhaps you should try fixing that instead of sacrificing the lives of young men for a small chance of making those decisions more painful.