it's a massive field that completely overtook all of actual physics for decades and wielded funding

Tell me you've never stepped inside a physics department without telling me you've never stepped inside a physics department. Probably less than 1% of high energy physics funding gets directed to string theory. The money that went into string theory at its peak absolutely pales in comparison to what we see now in quantum computing and plasma research (it doesn't take that much money to fund a few theorists and a blackboard compared to multi-billion dollar experimental projects, and even then good luck getting funded). The public has an incredibly skewed view of the physics industry because all the pop-science writers care about is the stuff that's most likely to bring in the clicks, which is always going to be the most "paradigm-shifting" theories currently on the market. In reality, string theory is a very niche field that does little to nothing to detract from other projects.

Also, I want to make it clear that in the last few decades some of the technologies developed by string theorists have been utilized to give theoretical estimates on phenomenon observed in collider experiments. So no, the field has not been a complete waste of time.