Just to follow on, the request of Authorization was coming from Rosetta. Since this is the X86 translation layer to M1, it’s not very well integrated.
The problem persisted with other X86 programs like Go2Shell, a nice utility that will open a terminal session and cd into the current directory being browsed. But it’s X86, so it runs into whatever was misconfigured in that ecosystem.
The problem was still present when I booted my system in SAFE mode. So I backed up everything with TimeMachine and Carbon Copy Cloner, then wiped the drive and reinstalled MacOS.
Many hours later after restoring my system from Time Machine, it’s back to normal. When I ran BalenaEtcher after the restore, it installed the helper application, and other applications. It works as expected on my other x86 machines.
Oy.