This is mostly to answer your frustration which you mention yourself:
"basically screwed, increasingly frustrating"
If it was up to Microsoft themselves they would of course not bother with this. Though as you say it's to be "GCC compliant".
Microsoft obviously does not set the GCC goals and controls. These controls are set by bureaucrats without necessarily having the IT knowledge of how the modern world works. An example is how people follow standards with no TLS 1.3 implemented yet. Why? Politics.
If you are frustrated with GCC, that's not on Microsoft's shoulder, but they may of course be able to answer you - however the frustration is something you can put towards whoever is maintaining the GCC controls making it harder to implement modern measures