The remote work as a "smiling menace" is an interesting way to describe a risk that some friends were talking about prior to the pandemic. I can't tell whether is pushed the timeframe forward or back, but the same risk seems to be there. Although outsourcing seems to me to trend in waves.
Knowledge work outsourced out of timezone by more than 4-5 hours is slow. At least 2x as slow, all things being equal. The communication and management overhead is significant to the point where at least an 80% reduction in cost, if not more, would be required, IMHO, to be worth the investment risks outside of the HQ tz.
A guess at what the workforce is going to look like in the next few years