Option 2: Safeguarded Technical Review

You widen beyond a minimal check, but keep the effort primarily technical and tightly controlled.

A structured review is authorized: snapshot capture, parameter diffs, and bounded distribution checks. Access is limited and read-only where possible. The work produces clearer signal on drift and downstream effects—enough to narrow hypotheses without turning the issue into a broad institutional event.

What you have protected is operational stability. What remains unresolved is legitimacy: the more the technical story sharpens, the more attention shifts toward governance questions that engineering alone cannot settle.

The secure channel remains active. The source engages carefully—willing to steer you away from obvious misreads and point to the right comparisons—while still withholding anything that increases traceability or implies intent.

By late afternoon, you have a bounded technical story—but the pressure moves upward into authorization and accountability, where “clean analysis” stops being enough.