'I just can't believe this was done by so-called "AI scrapers."'

It was, and is. You WordPress install or a plugin in use had a vulnerability, has happened to most frameworks. See Link_farm & Spamdexing for common uses of these exploits.

In reply to Re^3: Moving the site behind a CDN by marto
in thread Moving the site behind a CDN by Co-Rion

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