It's a real problem, and I've been struggling with it for two decades, but even so I am legitimately impressed (and not in a good way) if they have 170,000 lines of Matlab code in their production software. That takes a really special combination of productivity and cluelessness, even for academic specialists. Regardless of the facts of this particular case, it should be absolutely horrifying that anyone's freedom is left up to a gigantic pile of unaudited Matlab code. (That said I am almost certain he added some zeros to the number, I have a hard time imagining what they're doing that could be that complex.)