So, in effect, we should take the opposite approach and lower the bar, not raise it. If ASICs are inevitable, they should be as widely available as possible.
That is the general idea. Some already been arguing that the common CPUs and GPUs are ASIC, where the Specific Application that they are optimized for is a well known von Neumann architecture or 3D visualization pipeline. So the ball is on the software engineer's side and they need to find how to fully utilize the strength of the devices that everyone and their dog already have.
Make it easier for a greater number of manufacturers to create ASICs, not harder.
I would reword it to the effect that we don't really need many manufacturers, we need many alternative uses and prospective users for the hardware used for mining.
The software engineers designing PoW algorithms are mostly too focused on how to spoil other's game instead on how to improve their own game.
Anyway, Bitmain responded to the above article:
https://blog.bitmain.com/en/bitmain-sia-state-cryptocurrency-mining/which will definitely interest the readers.