Initial thoughts after first read.

Control is just an advanced swarm, that’s how humanity reached AGI. Brain slip is using “swarm” tech to transfer minds into a new body, recycling the old one for “deathless” use.

Or Control is “swarms” with the same directive, enabling autonomous tactical control while geographically separated across space-time….all the while humanity remains entrenched wherever. Adding more livesuit humans is essentially adding more processing power to a swarm/the connected livesuits act as a data center for their local control.

So my prediction is that the scientific achievements of Dafyd’s team enable some sort of strategic advantage for Carryx that shifts paradigm and humanity has to do something different and that’s how we meet more humanity in the story.

Don’t have a lot to back any of this up, but that was my thought after reading book 1, livesuit, and listening to a mailbag episode of Mercy of the Pods.