This is typical institutional behaviour. The CEO turns to the CTO and asks "Is there anything I need to know in my company?" He doesn't want to be caught off-guard when the White House inevitably calls the next morning. The CTO goes to his team, and on and on, all with a deadline of "the boss wants to know this by closing time."

Then one unhappy engineering team scoures the logs and sees what their model has done.

This downwards chain is sometimes called "cover your ass."