They deposited money in SVB's Cayman Islands subsidiary (a country that's a well-known tax haven). SVB goes under and the Cayman Islands have no deposit insurance so their deposits are wiped out. Now they want their money back or their debt forgiven. The SVB Cayman deposits didn't pay into the FDIC insurance fund so they shouldn't be given the protection of the FDIC.
The title of the article makes it sound like some poor SVB "customers" are in a bad situation. The truth is that it's going to be venture capital, private equity, and some really wealthy individuals (who were probably trying to dodge taxes). It's hard to feel bad for extremely rich people using a well-known tax haven losing some money. The WSJ is really burying the lead in this story. If you're trying to avoid US laws, regulations, and taxes, you can't come looking for US protections.
EDIT: In a previous article on the topic, the WSJ noted "The financial pain being felt by SVB’s foreign depositors could make investment firms that are incorporated or doing business in offshore financial hubs reconsider where they should put their money and what protections they have" https://www.wsj.com/articles/cayman-islands-regulator-explor...
We don't want to incentivize people to dodge taxes while thinking they'll enjoy all the protections paid for by taxes.
I can't see the article since it's paywalled, but the bank would have required that a certain amount of funds remain on deposit for the borrower to get the terms. I've seen and facilitated an SVB loan agreement for a startup, and I can tell you that's exactly what it says. So the bank required you to park your money there, and then it lost the funds. In any normal business context, the money lost would come off of the balance owed. It sounds like the loan was received from one entity, but the deposits were placed with another, and none of the parties contemplated a bank collapse that would require the bank to forfeit a portion of the owed amount.
fwiw, Prisma has a guide on how to do RLS with it's client. While the original issue[0] remains open they have example code[1] with the client using client extensions[2]. I was going to try it out and see how it felt.
[0]: https://github.com/prisma/prisma/issues/12735
[1]: https://github.com/prisma/prisma-client-extensions/blob/main...
[2]: https://www.prisma.io/docs/concepts/components/prisma-client...