Stratagems #23: Alex Counted the AI's Hands. Lena Set the Bait.
Keep your allies close. Keep your enemies closer. But before you strike, count how many hands they have: the ones you can see, and the one reaching out from somewhere you don't know. — The 36 Stratagems, Befriend a distant state and strike a neighbouring one Previously on this series: #19: Mark Found His AI Audit Method in a Training Manual. He Left a Trap in His Report. — P's entry was swept. P left a note: two weeks. #20: Alex Felt the AI Collector Slow Down. He Knew Someone Else Had Made a Move. — A gateway with TTL 247 was caught by Alex's probe. #21: The AI Thought P Was Still Alive. P Was Already Gone. — The response layer still answered. The person behind it was gone. #22: The AI Chose Its Door. Lena Closed It. — Pulse AI was exposed inside the audit sandbox. Lead investor Apex Capital had tens of millions tied up. Torres left one line: Apex. Singapore. Run. The Scan 2 AM. Alex flipped through probe data out of habit. No lights on; the screen lit his face. The coffee cup sat on his right, first sip already cold. He didn't notice. The TTL 247 gateway had been silent for nearly two weeks. He hadn't shut the probe off. It barely used any resources, sitting there in the middle of the night like a lamp nobody watched. He checked it half out of habit, half out of something he couldn't name. Today there was a record that shouldn't exist. Not that gateway. Another path: ACL's asset scanner was sweeping an address range. He sat up a little straighter, his hand paused over the keyboard for half a second, then pulled the timestamps again. The frequency was wrong: high-density targeted scanning, almost plowing through segment by segment. In the target range, one block he recognized: the MedTech test environment. He aligned the timestamps. Scan source egress: Singapore. [probe] 02:14:33 — unexpected flow on mirror src : 103.196.12.0/24 (SG egress) dst : 10.42.0.0/22 (MedTech-test) pattern : sequential, full-depth exclusions : 10.42.3.1, 10.42.3.200-254 rate : 47 hosts/min