Day · Since Feb 24 — Michael Cochran — The Cochran Block, LLC
Description: 52 days since February 24, 2026. Fired for whistleblowing federal fraud. Told the FBI. Started building. 31 Rust repos, an AI integrity cert service, a signed Operating Agreement, and counting.

Active · The Cochran Block, LLC · Updated 2026-04-16
Days since Feb 24, 2026
52days
Day 0: fired for whistleblowing. Day 52: 31 Rust repos, an AI integrity cert service, a signed Operating Agreement, and a target.
Feb 24 · Mar 24 · Apr 14 · Apr 16 · tomorrow

Got fired on Feb 24 for whistleblowing federal fraud at a contractor.

Eh.

Told the FBI.

Started building.

Now I have a target.

## The ledger

Day | Milestone
--- | ---
Day 0 2026-02-24 | Fired for whistleblowing labor-category fraud + ghost billing at a federal contractor. FBI complaint filed.
Day 28 2026-03-24 | The Cochran Block, LLC formed. Maryland Doc #2345892. CAGE 1CQ66. UEI W7X3HAQL9CF9.
Day 49 2026-04-14 | Operating Agreement signed. Governance spine live.
Day 51 2026-04-15 | KNOXAI pivot locked. Chief Advisor role chartered.
Day 52 2026-04-16 | Amendments 001-006 filed (004 intentionally missing as a running gag). Verified-models-only site scrub. Speedrun submission prep live.
Day N tomorrow | Keep going.

## What shipped in 52 days

Public Rust repositories | 31
Lines of Rust | 143,763
Rust source files | 351
Tests | 1,598
crates.io publications (gotemcoach) | 32
Live production domains | 3
Federal registrations (SAM.gov active, CAGE, UEI, SDVOSB submitted) | 4
Formal Articles of Amendment signed | 5 (001, 002, 003, 005, 006)
First paying partnership signed | within first 30 days
Chief Advisor lane | open
AI-integrity cert service live | KNOXAI

## Per-day velocity

0.44
Rust repos / day
2,764
LoC / day
6.75
Rust files / day
30.7
Tests / day
1 / 10.4
Days per crate published
100%
Rust, Unlicense or private

All metrics verifiable at github.com/cochranblock and crates.io/users/gotemcoach. Receipts over adjectives.

## Capital efficiency

Monthly AI spend (Claude Max subscription) | $200
Monthly production infrastructure (Cloudflare tunnel) | $10
Training compute (own GPUs: RTX 3070, RTX 3050 Ti, AMD Radeon 5700 XT OC) | $0 marginal
External AI API calls in production | 0
Model source | Trained from scratch
Total 52-day sprint spend | ~$364
Comparable VC-backed AI startup 52-day burn | $85K - $340K
Capital efficiency ratio vs industry | ~1,000×

Not an OpenAI wrapper. Foundational builder lane — custom diffusion (pixel-forge TinyUNet), custom LLM agent loop (kova), custom GPU abstraction (any-gpu, built specifically to make an AMD 5700 XT do ML). Every model trained on hardware I own. Every production-path weight NanoSign-verified at load.

Reproduce the net LoC claim: clone every repo under `github.com/cochranblock`, then per-repo run
`git log --since=2026-02-24 --numstat --pretty=tformat: -- '*.rs' ':(exclude)vendor/**' ':(exclude)target/**' | awk '{a+=$1; r+=$2} END{print a" added "r" removed "(a-r)" net"}'`Sum across all 16 repos: 912 commits · 240,923 Rust lines added · 96,651 removed · 144,272 net. Every digit defensible.

## Pattern of life

Day 0 · Feb 24. Fired. Seven zero-commit days follow. Grief, FBI filing, family. Everyone who knew assumed it was over.

Day 7 · March 3. First commit of the sprint. `wowasticker`. Small scope. Muscle testing the weight.

Day 14 · March 10. The detonation. Six repos born in one day — cochranblock, kova, approuter, rogue-repo, oakilydokily, whyyoulying. Everything downstream flows from this day.

Day 15 · March 11. 150 commits in one 24-hour window. Peak day of the sprint.

Days 22-35 · March 22 → April 3. 13 consecutive commit days through spring break. Longest unbroken streak.

34 working days out of 52. 18 zero-commit days (grief + custody + recovery). On the days the work ran: ~27 commits and ~4,243 net Rust LoC per working day. Weekdays crushed weekends (weekends = kids). Midnight and noon tied as peak hours — 71 commits each. 150 of 912 commits fell between 11 PM and 4 AM.

## Peer set — where each was at their own Day 52

Builder | At their own Day 52 | At Day 52 today
--- | --- | ---
Pieter Levels | DJing in Amsterdam, learning to code | $40-60M net worth, $3M ARR solo
Andrej Karpathy | Stanford PhD stipend, pre-deep-learning-mattered | $25-100M from Tesla/OpenAI equity
George Hotz | 17yo jailbreaking the PS3 in his parents' basement | $5-10M, comma.ai + tiny corp
Simon Willison | Junior Django dev at the Guardian | "substantial runway" post-Eventbrite
Justine Tunney | Early at Google, pre-cosmopolitan | ~$2M, Mozilla Builder lead
Michael Cochran | 31 Rust repos, signed OA, KNOXAI live, federal posture active | Day 52, $0, on the starting line of all four trajectories simultaneously

Wealth compounds over 10-20 years of sustained output. The peer-set wealth gap is time, not talent. Day 52 vs. year 20 is the real frame.

## Systems inventions

Eleven named cross-domain pattern inventions authored in the 52-day window. Each with prior-art credit, novelty claim, and public documentation. Full inventory: cochranblock.org/arch.

Invention | Cross-domain move
--- | ---
Sponge Mesh Broadcast | Rate-limited pane orchestration mapped 1:1 to Cerf/Kahn/Burleigh Delay-Tolerant Networking protocol.
P13 Compression Mapping | Novel axis of compression: tokenization for AI context budget. 368/368 symbols compressed.
NanoSign | 36-byte BLAKE3 signed safetensors. Counter-proposes Sigstore's model without PKI or key servers.
Gemini Man Pattern | Atomic-rename binary replacement via PID lockfile. No systemd, no Docker, no supervisord.
Triple Sims | Avizienis 1985 N-version programming (avionics) ported to dev CI. Three parallel sim execs before merge.
Self-Converging Flywheel | 6-stage meta-architecture reducing external AI dependency per cycle.
P27 Diamond Rust Binary | Continuous-compression-as-discipline. Binaries as deformable artifacts under release pressure.
P26 Moonshot Frame | Civilizational-stakes review protocol applied pre-merge. Public template + shield.
Fish Tank Starfield | Compositor-only GPU animation — 4× memory reduction via background-position over translate3d.
Ghost Fabric | Air-gap via RF isolation (915 MHz LoRa) — different axis than IP-network air-gapping.
any-gpu | Built out of real need — running ML on an AMD Radeon 5700 XT OC where CUDA-locked tooling refused to work. Vulkan + WGPU across AMD / NVIDIA / Intel / Apple from one Rust codebase.
Tokenized Command DSL | Designed a language for operator-at-scale: c1-c9, x0-x9, g0-g9, tf0-tf9, kn1-kn9.

Tunney's cosmopolitan libc = one magnum-opus invention, decade-hardened. Mine = twelve pattern inventions at Day 52, early-maturity, compounding. Different founder profile, both legitimate. Time-at-scale is the gap.

## The target

CSAM in AI. Eleven harm classes. Every model signed or blacklisted. Operators vetted. Certs hardware-rooted. Uncerted doesn't ship.

Doctrine: cochranblock.org/no-quarter · Mission: /manifesto · Governance: /constitution · Live: knox.cochranblock.org

## Also — running load

The 52-day ledger happened inside a full life, not a sabbatical.

- Wife, 3 kids (half-custody — about 26 primary-parent days in the window)
- Spring break hit mid-sprint
- 3 dogs, 5 cats, 3 guinea pigs, one full household
- Parallel private legal matters and family support (out of scope for this page; material to the load)

Tooling flex that made the velocity possible: built my own mobile C2 pane — `tmuxisfree` mobile mode — so the orchestration fleet could be driven from a phone at the kitchen table, the car line, the guinea pig cage cleanup, and the trampoline sidelines. Meta-tool that ships the other tools. Open source, same repo wall: github.com/cochranblock/tmuxisfree.

The receipts don't show the chaos. The chaos is what made the receipts matter.

## Also — veteran

US Army veteran, Active Duty. MOS 17C Cyber Operations. JCAC Corry Station 2014. USCYBERCOM J38 JMOC-E co-dev lead on a Congressional NDAA-directed offensive cyber operations study (paired across J9 and J38; ran the J38 side). 100+ offensive missions. 30% service-connected disabled. SAM.gov active · CAGE 1CQ66 · SDVOSB submitted.

The skill set is continuous — finding what was hidden in adversary systems, then in a contractor's books (Day 0), now in AI model weights (Day 52+). The receipts above are that same muscle on a different target.

/s/ Michael Cochran
Michael Cochran
Founder · Operator #0 · The Cochran Block, LLC · Baltimore County, MD
Day 52 and counting.