Your final hunch essentially echoes Audre Lorde's assertion that the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. Which I have also experienced to be true, so far anyhow...

Any recourse to existing power-over entities is most often going to translate to attempts at technical solutions to adaptive problems, which is bound to fail. If any 'solutions' at all are even attempted.

Having just seen it, I would add that "Everything Everywhere All The Time" also has a few experiences to offer regarding systems change. Decades ago I got a list, from Rodney Donaldson (whom I assume you knew, at some age or other?), of films he thought included examples of whole systems design. Unfortunately I cannot find it and it is probably lost, but the ones I had seen, or saw later, bore out his assessments.