They definitely wouldn't be if attackers knew that it would then bypass cooldowns!
Ultimately, you need someone to verify releases and that probably means paying for it. I know Sonatype paid solutions utilise their own internal research to allow/block new releases.
No, but there's a bigger tradeoff for not upgrading. In one case it's that you're potentially exposed to a known vulnerability, vs the other case where you might just be missing out on some new or slightly reworked feature.
We need something external that actually checks to see if source code matches built artifacts, and also possibly something Llm based that checks to see if you’re making checked in code vulnerable or directly adding something malicious.