security – No Administrator Account Found: Recovery Mode

So here’s the deal. I recently cloned my internal drive to a 1TB external SSD using SuperDuper!. It worked great, allowing me to boot into it, do everything I need to.

However, today, I went to Startup Security Utility in attempts to change the policy to Reduced Security to allow kernel extensions. However, it get “Recovery is trying to change system settings. No administrator account was found.”

I’ve looked around a bit, and found some post on this forum, but none directly relate— most are about not being able to boot into an external drive. I can do that. I also found some stuff about Secure Tokens, and how a secure token is needed.

Here’s what I’ve attempted:

• Delete .AppleSetupDone and re-run installation, creating a new Admin account
• Check both my original account (“landon”) and new admin account (“admin”) for secure tokens using sysadminctl -secureTokenStatus landon which shows enabled, and it showed disabled for admin.
• Generated a secure token for admin using sysadminctl -adminUser landon -adminPassword <pass> -secureTokenOn admin -password <pass>
• Run diskutil apfs updatePreboot /

Even after this, I am still seeing the “No administrator was found” error. I am using an M1 Mac Mini with Apple’s T2 chip.

How can I resolve the error outlined given the context of my situation?