No offense
Wildwood but is your off-the-cuff rant against the Shimano MTB drivetrain motivated by experience, or speculation? Having used the 1x Deore XT drivetrains in the past on both mountain and "gravel" bikes, it works quite well and I don't think anybody reports any issues with fragility. The designs have been OEM on mountain bikes for many years now and I'd think if the issues you're bring up are real, the many hundreds of thousands of people who have actually ridden the components off-road would have mentioned them.