If this were true, OP would see Steam as a user-mode process taking up the CPU time. Since the OP image is sorted by CPU time and the process isn’t visible, it’s gotta be those kernel threads that aren’t displayed by default.

Fractional scaling (per-display), input isolation…

Amazon already built it: https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Sidewalk

I interpreted that in the sense of “service call”, like going out to some remote site to do something menial

Nice, what’s your email stack look like?