When a CEO publicly insists his company has not laid off anyone because of AI, the intended message is reassurance. The actual message — visible in @Seanfrank's own framing — is that performance standards have shifted, and the people who could not meet the new standard are gone [17]. That is not a rebuttal to AI-displacement anxiety. It is a description of how displacement happens when it is managed through performance review rather than headcount announcement. The distinction matters to executives managing their public image. It does not matter to…