it's an obvious bad faith argument, why include it at all?

Why is that? As I said, I read that as a stylistic choice that's very obvious from context.

The point of discussing a contact tracing app is NOT techno-magic, but (1) the inability of states to remain in lockdown very long and (2) very real and probably unavoidable limitations of "traditional" contact tracing with this particular disease's narrow timeframes (like the window between Person A becoming symptomatic and a person infected by Person A becoming themselves infectious).

I think everyone understands what the app is supposed to do. This article asks the question if it can, because apps aren't magic.