It's not in the article, and I don't think I've ever seen an "official" answer, but...I do think "because we can" is a valid answer. It was valid when they did it with TMP, and it was valid the subsequent times they tweaked the makeup.
In terms of how it served the story being told...I can see the appeal of having more alien-looking, "scarier" Klingons in a season that was ultimately about the dangers of xenophobia.
I always kind of liked the Kelvin Klingons.
Well, the makeup, anyway. I don't care for the costumes at all.
I think the cranium size was the biggest "miss" in the design - I quite liked the season two iteration of the same basic ideas.
I certainly agree that it needs government oversight and attention. A ministry, though...I'm not convinced, and inclined to think the worst when "we'll use AI to fix the government" was a consistent taking point during the campaign.
But it was rightly pointed out that AI is only part of the name. I'd just as soon it not be there, but we'll see what happens.
Former journalist Evan Solomon takes on a newly created role as minister of artificial intelligence.
Ugh.
It was a BQ riding, not CPC.
July 1 is his self-established deadline.
There's absolutely no reason to think any show is being made "instead of" another.
Edit: And as Newsome herself stated, this series has not been greenlit. It may not get made at all.
That would be a question for Bryan Fuller. He's recently started to talk about this stuff, so maybe we'll get an answer some day.
One thing I do think someone said along the line is that they wanted to establish why the Klingons and Starfleet hate each other so much in TOS.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: if they ever do an oral history of the development of that series, it will be a juicy read.