What would have happened if we just dropped a 20tb hard drive in front of the computer researchers of that time?

Nothing, they would have no idea what it was, or how to interface with it. They might even end up destroying it because they have no idea of the power requirements. Even if they managed to get it powered up and guessed at what it was for, they would still be stuck with the issue of not having an operating system which is capable of logically addressing all of the storage. And the lack of drivers would make that even harder.

A lot of modern technology sits atop a mountain of other modern technology which must be sorted out before you can even start to think about designing the end product. It could be that, since they knew what was possible, and had an example to crib off of, scientists and engineers could have gotten to that point faster. But, there is just an insane amount of prior tech in front of modern computers that any one piece of it, thrown back that far, would likely just be shiny junk.

This is why many communication options these days advertise that they are encrypted.

Like Signal. You know, the app they were using, as was mentioned in the article, multiple times. You did read the article, right?

This is what I mean by my constant insistence upon “moderation” in government. Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H.L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.
– President Eisenhower

It seems that this is going to be put to the test.

The honeymoon period is slowly coming to an end. We’re just about to reach the bleary eyed, “what the fuck did I just do?” period.

Perfect, we’ll just spin up an image of your machine in EC2, give it a public IP, set the default network rules to “allow any any” and we’re good. And I have no idea why the security team just all quit.