Along those lines: especially when coming from a technical background and dealing with non-technical stakeholders, wording like "hmm, this would likely be a pretty intensive multi-week project" might have been intended as carrying the benign context "...and the team would be excited if that's what leadership wants to prioritize" but can often be interpreted as "...and I'm going to fight you tooth and nail on this."

Pausing and engaging on the benefits of a proposal can be incredibly valuable, even if your mind has already raced to the considerations about implementation and opportunity cost. Many engineers understand that there's no higher praise than a leader diving into the weeds on something, but many other stakeholders don't have the same context!