“When Gregory McFadden tweeted that Control Center was using 26GB of the 64GB of RAM on his new MacBook Pro, the screenshot looked very familiar.”
Control Center is the menu with the Wi-Fi and volume toggles. It ate 26GB. Apple solders the RAM to the chip, so the base M1 tops out at 16GB forever. When the memory is fixed and the leaks are not, the fix Apple sells you is a more expensive Mac.