I said nothing about "lawsuit you don’t want to be in". A DMCA claim either ends in an agreement (CNET agrees it's infringement or the submitter agrees it's not), or else the submitter has to go to court to prove their case. As I said they can of course "drop the whole thing": avoid any lawsuit but also drop the claim. Which is where the "misfire" rather than "backfire" analogy comes from.

Unlike the usual YouTube situations, CNET is both the online service provider and the party accused of infringing so the content can only go down if CNET agrees to take it down, or a court decides this.

No to which part exactly? Nothing in "ends up with a lawsuit if the 2 parties don't agree [...] or can drop the whole thing" suggests CNET can file a lawsuit. Without an agreement the only way to take down the content is a lawsuit.