The entire premise of the article is that the Russian government can and has used Kaspersky's access to perform espionage operations against the United States.

That absolutely is not a nothingburger. Russia is a hostile power and banning software a hostile power is actively using to attack you is perfectly legitimate behavior. This isn't "malware is using a file transfer application instead of rolling their own". It's "this is an application that by definition relies on absolute trust in the good faith of the provider, that is compromised by an enemy state".