Besides the python scripts, everything is parallelized and is CPU bound on as many cores as it can be given. Because of licensing throwing more CI at it isn’t an option. This is an open source project, so there’s not really money for buy moar bigger.
The tools possibly wouldn’t exist, but there are options now that provide better ergonomics and are not slow.
I think that's the position most "slow" scripts are: They could have been written faster in the first place, but they weren't intended to be kept for so long and/or that wasn't a priority at all in that moment. And now that people are looking at them again they could be fixed, but there's usually still not enough merits to do so.
I assume something will done at some point, but IMHO it's one of these very nice problems to have, as there is a working version that will only be replaced by something better, and only if it's worth it.
The tools possibly wouldn’t exist, but there are options now that provide better ergonomics and are not slow.