Residency

It says NYC Electrical right on the plate. Nobody's hiding what it is. Nobody's checking it either.

Nobody brought the pizza. Nobody invited the pigeon. Either way — a discarded resource, a critical access point, and something settled between them without asking permission.

Pre-positioning isn't about being invisible. It's about being unremarkable. Volt Typhoon, the China-linked group embedded inside US power grids, water systems, and communications infrastructure for years, didn't hide its presence so much as it made that presence feel like background noise. Nothing that triggered an alert. Nothing that didn't have a plausible explanation. Just access, maintained quietly, on infrastructure that hasn't been looked at hard enough because nobody wanted to find out what looking hard enough would cost.

The plate says what it is. Something is sitting on it. The city keeps moving.

That's pre-positioning. Not a breach. A residency.