I suspect it's like a lot of DoD-funded research. The work gets done, the report gets written, and then it goes on a shelf (or rather, some ancient SharePoint site on a classified network with no functional search ability). When a crisis occurs, the word goes out to everyone, the one lifer analyst spending too much time in windowless rooms at the Pentagon pipes up about something he remembers, and then everyone is satisfied that the work got done, "the problem is understood". Everything goes back to normal until it happens again.

I find it difficult to believe that a coterie of seal spouses coordinated a brain study of their dead husbands and after finding a smoking gun, none of them thought to fire off a message to anybody in the Navy.

It's entirely possible that they actually did send messages, but the people they informed didn't give a fuck, and are in entirely separate divisions from the Navy officers The Times interviewed.