Given the time period of their installation, the GG seem like some rich fucks reading 1970s "The Population Bomb" type classics and frontin' wannabe Bucky fuller, Paolo Soeri stylings. That 500 mil number is more commonly thrown around in population ethics than one might think and probably shouldn't have too much weirdness read into it.
Big waste of money for sure but would wager that their destruction is nothing more than the same old political violence lite engendered by Trumpers like, in this case, Kandiss Taylor.