TIL that the scp command does not, by default, compress files it transfers, and that you need to add the -C flag to make it do that, and by doing that I have sped up my transfer speed about 40x, and without this knowledge I have probably wasted literally days of my life waiting for things in the past.
@jimbob Also scp is actually deprecated which keeps boggling my mind.
@hynek looks like— in RedHat at least— the scp protocol is deprecated but the command remains, now by default uses the sftp protocol under the hood https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/openssh-scp-deprecation-rhel-9-what-you-need-know
OpenSSH SCP deprecation in RHEL 9: What you need to know

One of the most important security changes for OpenSSH in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 9 is the deprecation of the SCP protocol. Here's everything you need to know.