I read through Android builds failing when 'Script Debugging' is enabled and found we were running buildPlayerOptions.options |= BuildOptions.AllowDebugging; for this type of build. Removing that line “fixed” my problem in that it didn’t crash. I did not try increasing the stripping level.
For reference I’m using Unity 2021.3.0f1
It’s still not clear to me what’s happening under the hood, but I’m moving on to other problems.