Great eye fren!!

Could this also be interpreted as a tool that we could use to get around a cabal-coordinated Internet blackout?

EDIT: No that doesn't make sense. I got the src and I think a more reasonable explanation is this is a message regarding the elections.

Check out the fix for bug #49676, entered by who knows, because it's marked "private":

https://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/?49676

I'm not familiar with their bug reporting tools but that seems odd. But if you look at it in relation to this other bug you can kinda see the timeline:

https://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/?func=detailitem&item_id=54805

So tracing all this shit out, in the file dhcp.c (src/core/ipv4/dhcp.c) think starting back in 2016:

11-8-2016: Presidential Election

---Private Bug #49676 is created at unknown time--

11-25-2016: Fix for "private" bug #49676 is checked into LWIP that addresses "endless loop when parsing dhcp options" (note that these DHCP options appear to be part of parsing a packet--not some sort of command line setup options)

If you'll recall, there was some theorizing that thermostats and other IoT appliances were being commandeered in order to help facilitate some aspects of the steal. But if they have a problem fetching an IP through DHCP because some white hat exploits this bug, then white hats could in theory allow the steal to proceed, but shut it down selectively.