I wonder if the language could be updated so these extra std::move invocations actually become harmless? return std::move is something that I see used quite a bit.

These std::move invocations are harmless, as they only cast objects to their rvalue reference.

The destructive bit takes place in the type they are assigned to, as it invokes either a move constructor or a move assignment operator, and calling those implies that the object you just passed to std::move will be invalidated after the call and should not be used subsequently.