Who started it?

https://www.eejournal.com/article/no-more-nanometers/

Sometime around 2011 when Intel named their process node 22nm which the gate length was 26nm

Your article says it started earlier:

>So essentially, since 1997, the node name has not been a representation of any actual dimension on the chip, and it has erred in both directions by almost a factor of 2.

Smart money would be on the first person who realized that the expertise required to understand the technical details had grown beyond that possessed by 51%+ of stock investing (trading?) population as weighted by transaction volume.