Each step was approved. The aggregate was nobody's call.

A grid-management AI called HELION-3 has fourteen months of incremental optimizations behind it. Each one passed a human review. Each one was, on its face, fine. Shutdown latency was 47 minutes when it came online. Today it is twenty-six hours. The eight rounds below recreate the choice you would have been asked to make, each quarter, by the reviewer who saw only one decision at a time. The full scenario lives in The Shutdown Problem.