Not even deceptive. This is relatively normal business practice.
It’s easier to think of this as “project risk” as opposed to corporate risk overall.
This isn’t different than creating a subsidiary to embark on a new program, with its own debts and assets, collateralized by a parent company.
It’s effectively the same as what happens every time a major movie studio starts a new film project.
Usually subsidiaries’ debt is not also debt on the parent company, especially when said parent is publicly traded and subject to accounting/disclosure rules.