I'm sure as an insider you have a better and more realistic view of things.
Here on the outside, it's hard not to imagine the 2022 blog post that carefully explains that the huge cost and burden of maintaining a modern independent browser engine just isn't the most efficient way of furthering Mozilla's goal of an open internet.
Not an insider although I have some contacts at Mozilla who talk freely over beers.
Mozilla is definitely moving away from Firefox over the next few years, this is but one of the first steps to that end. They have decided to renew Google's partnership so Google will remain the default search engine for the foreseeable future (next 3+ years), once again talking the talk instead of walking the walk and switch to a privacy-first engine.
The security and devtools teams getting axed is not only a clear signal but also the physical implementation of de-emphasizing Firefox and pushing for new standalone subscription services that don't need to be integrated (as tightly) into any browser to be used by actual people.
A few years down the line of such a "strategy", all things remaining equal, I can't see the browser being even used by developers/FOSS advocates because even these kinds of people need to see at least some progress over time and get at least some increasing value over time from a piece of software they use as heavily as they are, every single day of their professional as well as personal lives.
Last but not least, with all due respect to Aaron, I can't see such strategic decisions to be taken with the assent of his team at all. In effect, the GeckoView team could get axed overnight and implementations would immediately turn to using Android's WebView instead. It's actually a bit ironic that GeckoView's own wiki lists itself as "not a dropin replacement of Android's WebView" in that regard, as most differences between the two are due to GeckoView's rejection of existing, native APIs, leading the team to do much rework. And teams that base themselves on doing unnecessary rework and following NIH instead of building on existing libraries and APIs often get canned first during such strategic shifts.
Here on the outside, it's hard not to imagine the 2022 blog post that carefully explains that the huge cost and burden of maintaining a modern independent browser engine just isn't the most efficient way of furthering Mozilla's goal of an open internet.