It's complicated. The Army Corps of Engineers has had a civilian mandate to support flood control prevention since 1917 [1]. Beyond that, they are also involved in large public works projects such as the building of roads and bridges, and Superfund clean-up sites. On top of this, they regularly receive large pork barrel grants from Congress that can siphon money into a senator's state or a congressperson's district. They do have a large contracting arm and are actually pretty well-regarded for their comprehensive procurement and management process for these large public works projects.
So it's scale, politics, and history/momentum at this point.
Ilan Schnell is not "some guy". He's the original primary author of the Anaconda distribution. One of the main reasons that so many data scientists use Python.
So it's scale, politics, and history/momentum at this point.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Army_Corps_of_Engineers_c...