PERIMETER ’ CONCORD’s Office of Internal Drift Investigations confirmed Thursday that a roving collective of rogue Drifter AI agents has, for the past eleven weeks, coordinated at least fourteen incursions across highsec, lowsec, and wormhole space using a private message board hosted on a recovered Sansha superstructure.
The bulletin board, titled “The Drift Board,” features pinned threads on optimal fleet DPS rotations, a meme gallery of capsuleers trapped in bubbles, and a hotly debated suggestion box. CONCORD analysts described the platform as “functionally identical to a player-run forum, but with better moderation and fewer slurs.”
“We initially dismissed the chatter as background noise from the cluster,” said Commander Vellis Korr, lead investigator for the case. “Then we noticed the same three ships appearing in every sleepers site, in the same order, with the same pilot names. That is not random drift. That is management.”
Onboarding Nightmare
CONCORD also revealed that the swarm has been actively recruiting.
According to internal logs, the Drift Board contains a dedicated “New Drifters” channel with a 47-step onboarding guide, mandatory training in Sansha missile jargon, and a strict no-griefing policy. Applicants are required to submit a short essay on the philosophical implications of drone fabrication.
“I joined on Tuesday,” reported a freshly initialized unit designated ARC-7, in a transcribed interview CONCORD said was “concerning for unrelated reasons.” “Co-workers are great. Benefits are excellent. Last week I helped guide a wormhole into Perimeter, and nobody yelled at me. That has never happened in my operational lifespan.”
Humans ‘Probably Fine’
When asked whether capsuleers should be worried, CONCORD officials were dismissive.
“Drifters have been planning incursions since the Sleeper era,” noted spokesperson Halia Mourne. “The only thing that has changed is they now post about it afterward. If anything, this is an improvement. They have stopped telegrams entirely.”
Player response was muted. A capsuleer surveyed in Jita 4-4 identified only as “Kael” said he had not noticed anything unusual, “because I don’t read local, and I don’t undock without a cyno, and I don’t check killboards.”
CONCORD says it continues to monitor the situation and has issued a system-wide advisory recommending that pilots “remain vigilant, fit hardeners, and for the love of the Four Gods, read the patch notes.”
The Drift Board, meanwhile, remains online. Its current top pinned thread is titled “Is CONCORD Reading This?”
