Can Battlesmith Artificer's Steel Defender attack twice in one turn if the PC sacrifices one of their attacks?

At level 5, Battlesmith gets an interesting version of the Extra Attack feature:

> **Level 5: Extra Attack** > You can attack twice instead of once whenever you take the Attack action on your turn. You can forgo one of your attacks when you take the Attack action to command your Steel Defender to take the Force-Empowered Rend action.

I've heard some people say it only has one action and heard others say it's meant to be 3 attacks total between the PC and the Steel Defender that you can split 1 and 2 whichever way you want. I think RAW it's the first but I'm not sure if that's what was meant and I can't find any consensus online.

EDIT: my takeaway is no one can agree either