It gets a small (peripheral?) mention but The Jackpot books - The Peripheral and Agency are really good. They're going to be a series on Amazon Prime too.
I loved both the Jackpot books - the way the first one throws you in with no context whatsoever and slowly reveals itself. And I thought it interesting with Agency (possible spoilers) that the only characters with any actual agency were vastly intelligent military AIs or whatever post-human monsters Lowbeer and the rest of the Klept are. Mere humans never got a look in.
I think you're right there and I think it suffers from the political context in which it was written. The near future America of Peripheral was far stronger and more convincing, even politically, than the near future America of Agency.
Also, Peripheral described a dark, dilapidated countryside / suburbia which was a new landscape for Gibson. While Agency's stub differs significantly from ours but because it is closer chronologically maybe it felt uncanny?
Yeah I wasn't being precise sorry. The agency stub's similarities to our world felt too "on the nose" or similar, in a way that detracted from it being an accurate/enthralling depiction of our world (in the way that all sf is no matter when/where it's set). It's hard to phrase what I mean here but I think the countryside/suburbia might have something to do with it. "2060s USA: The Department of Homeland Security is an oppressive militia and also one of very few sources of stable employment" felt much more real and powerful than "Kinda 201X USA: Trump didn't win, but now there's a nuclear standoff" but I can't say why exactly. There is still a lot of classic Gibson prose in Agency though--the good stuff. High hopes for the new book.
Good job on nailing down one of the things I didn't like about Agency. I felt the world-building in The Peripheral was top-notch, and it felt Agency kind of threw that away and it made everything feel very muddy.