I hate jinxing myself but I'm pretty sure I fixed it. Whew.
The cute folksy analogy is that a French robot and a Chinese robot were constantly trying to get through a door labeled "xmlrpc.php", because they heard that behind that door they would get unlimited power. In reality there's nothing behind that door, but their constant knocking and distractions made it difficult for us to respond to actual guests going through the actual front door. So I built a wall in front of the xmlrpc.php door.