That level of agency exists today. Any software developer can tell their manager that no, they're not doing X. The risk is that they get written up for insubordination or have to look for new employment.
What the author of the article doesn't know is that the structural engineer can also get fired if management deems the engineer too troublesome. The only difference is that the PE has a code of ethics and professional responsibility to uphold, and failing to do so would mean risking their license to practice engineering.
The most important difference is that in practice the SWE can't go and report the employer to anyone for breaching e.g. occupational health and safety laws, or any others, because those laws don't exist for the majority of software flaws. At best you have privacy laws like the GDPR or industry-specific ones covering e.g. medical devices...but CrowdStrike isn't meant to run in those environments anyway, see, look at this text buried in the license agreement.
What the author of the article doesn't know is that the structural engineer can also get fired if management deems the engineer too troublesome. The only difference is that the PE has a code of ethics and professional responsibility to uphold, and failing to do so would mean risking their license to practice engineering.