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When I make my statement about passwords, it is not an argument, it is a correction I am making to your incorrect statement.
Since you seem to be ignorant to how these attacks work, let me explain it to you. In short, the word "bug" is not a good way to describe it. It wasn't a single flaw that broke the whole thing.
Cryptographers are extremely conservative when it comes to security. Even if you would need 5 times all the computing power on Earth to crack an algorithm in a generation, they'll still call it "broken".
For SHA-1, its collision attack resistance is only 80 bits. That's already worryingly low, compared to SHA-256 with a design security of 128 bits. Cryptanalysis finds weaknesses in the design of hash algorithms, which means that we can do slightly better than random guessing. Essentially, we learn information about how the algorithm "randomises" its input in such a way that we know if we guess X, then we also know not to guess Y and Z depending on its output.
In today's environment, a hash algorithm with 80 bits of security would immediately be deprecated.
In 2005, published cryptanalysis whittled it down to 69 bits, approaching the point where all computing power on Earth at the time would have been enough to crack it. And then in 2007, 63 bits. In 2010, it was down to 57.5 bits. That was around the time that NIST recommended people stop using it.
Computing power also increased exponentially. It was not until 2017 when the first actual, *bona fide* collision was discovered. And even then, Google had to use their supercomputer to find it.
Here's the thing: it's not just the US government that relies on the security of SHA-256. The SHA functions (and the AES algorithm, also maintained by NIST) are relied on by every government and security service in the world. The American government in particular is confident enough of its security that it is willing to eat its own dog food. SHA-2 and AES are approved for securing data classified as Top Secret.
If there was any secret cryptanalysis that breaks SHA-2, it would be in the US government's interest, and indeed, *every* government's interest, to immediately stop using it as soon as they are aware of it. The thing about engineering secret keyholes into public algorithms like SHA and AES is that it is very difficult (if not impossible) to create a secret keyhole which you know about but that nobody else can find. You're betting that you are smarter than the entire planet, and that, historically, has never been a good bet. The fact that the US government still uses it, indicates they are very confident that it is secure.