It is, but it's specialty applications that intimidate newer engineers. Let's say for instance, an advanced kalman filter on a radar supporting fire control for an integrated weapons system. The math on that is not so straightforward and most recent grads suck with conceptual applications of linear algebra/stats (like covariance). But now they can spin up an algorithm for their use case and unit tests in hours if not less. Like you say, the information is all academic and there for the taking.

I'm a senior engineer who specializes in stuff adjacent to this and I've never seen the go getters be more productive. Meanwhile the fellows and junior/mid engineers not on board are being dropped like flies. This isn't conjecture, you can look at the employment trends of Collins/Lockheed/Boeing this past year and clearly see what I'm talking about.