Vercel April 2026 breach: it didn't break my infra, it broke my excuse

In 2003, running the cyber café at 16, I learned something that took me twenty years to put into words: trust without a model is negligence with good PR. We had eight machines connected through a 10/100 switch and a single internet uplink. When the connection dropped at 11pm with the place packed, I had five minutes to diagnose or my old man lost money. I learned not to trust anything I couldn't trace: not the router, not the ISP, not the cabling. Everything had to be verifiable. Everything had