A contact quarantine drill built around a known false positive still triggered a real board freeze after the event crossed several procedural thresholds faster than expected.
The freeze was not a mistake. It was a demonstration of how sensitive the live governance machinery has become. Once the exercise looked sufficiently real from inside the system, the board chose to use its actual authority rather than preserve the fiction that it remained only a simulation artifact.
That decision briefly frustrated the technical teams running the drill. It also made the exercise more valuable. Protocols are strongest when they reveal that institutional reflexes still work even when everyone hopes they will not need to.