T2 on MacBook Pro 2018 prevents boot after install

Got a MacBook Pro and just wasted 1 1/2 days. I think the T2 is presuming theft and locking out boot after all restores or installs. After trying 1/2 day yesterday I wasted a major part of the day waiting for a Genius who was not trained on the new model and had no tools to diagnose T2 issues. He also seemed unaware that you could not network boot T2 system (press N on startup.) This would indicate complete lack of training or support materials.

I suspected it was a result of theft protection with the T2 and arrived with my sales receipt in case they asked for proof. Based on a response on the developer forum, there are NO T2 recovery tools in the field.

They wanted me to return the system for repair pending parts for China - this would be a 5 week process. We will return the system for credit and buy new.

Posting here because there might be an engineer who knows. Pretty positive there must be a work around.

1. Got the system (custom order i9, 32GB. 4TB ssd) and started Migration Assistant from a cloned drive.

2. This interrupted for some reason. I rebooted and the system disk was not bootable.

3. Having lived through this (I have used Macs for decades) I decided to restore and booted the recovery partition. I disabled T2 boot block for signed macOS on external drives just to be sure.

- I needed to log in as Admin, the utility seemed to get this from the partial migration on the main parition!

- T2 utility seemed to be fine

- Erased main partition in prep for a new install - this likely was the mistake!!!!

4. Could not boot from external boot. All boot attempts of fresh 10.13.6 or Mojave Beta 5 failed and resorted to the network recovery install screen. This was the same behavior as 5. There was a reboot sequence and then it just restarted itself.

5. The build in recovery partition disappeared.

6. Tried network recovery install 5x (also instructed for this by AppleCare, who had no other info on T2.)

- It succeeds, downloads the installer and starts installing.

- But at the end of the install after essentially completing it just reboots to the network recovery prompt.

- Option boot shows the Installer partition, but does not get you back in.

- Under some circumstances, with Option Boot an Install partition is visible, but it also boots to the Network Recovery prompt.

7. Recovery is only available from network (Apple Recovery servers) which fails after loading and installing. I have tried all combinations of initiating keystrokes on that one - previous install, currently installed version, later version.

8. I have run First Aid and erased the disk using the Network Recovery system recovery utilities.

9. I have tried a T2 Firmware recovery with the Configurator 2 as outlined by an Apple Support document, but the system does not go into DFU mode.

This was tried both with High Sierra 10.13.6 and 10.14 beta 5 for boot or installation.

My theory is: T2 prevents all boots from any media. It looks for the Admin info which was wiped during erase.

I do believe engineering did not foresee or cover this use case properly. I am also surprised about the lack of training and tools. I would have expected better from the Genius. Will not waste my time in the future. I seem to know more than they do.

Any ideas anybody? Hate to wait another week or more for another system. This is very silly, since it could be resolved with the correct utility.