Furthermore, the government is complicit in the intentional insecurity of the phone networks, protocols, and operating systems.

And oftentimes the government and the criminals will be the same people—if not at the beginning then by convergence.

also a demonstration of resources of the state vs those of a cartel

quite good and poses significant challenge to the state

And sometimes, the government becomes the criminals and everyone discovers that it's really difficult to get them to hold themselves accountable.

Ummm... You don't want to receive calls and texts?

Your surprise at this makes you an extreme outlier.

I do this at home to avoid needlessly hunting for towers that are barely in range. But I am concerned that if I don't leave the house for a few days the carrier (Google Fi / TMobile) may be discarding messages. I've heard mixed opinions on if this is happening. But I am missing calls even with WiFi calling on.

That's not how any of this works.

i am pretty confident that at least 99.99% of people dont put their phone in airplane mode when not actively making a call

You sound like my grandfather when he had a phone. Constantly switched off and only switched it on when he wanted to call somebody and then switched it off. So frustrating how he was incapable of understanding that other people might want to call him too.