The Vex showed up on Mercury when the Traveler was still terraforming it, the Vex on Venus however predate not only the Traveler's arrival but humanity itself. The Vex arrived on each planet seperately. The implication I made is that the consciousness within the Exo body is not in fact a transfer of consciousness, but a simulation. The specifics are to be seen, but there is a connection, the simple fact Clovis Bray had an Exo and Vex hooked up in the same pod makes that apparent.

Ghost Fragment Vex 4: “... "It could have been latent," Chioma Esi suggests. She's the leader. She kept them together when it seemed like they faced actual, eternal torture. She pulled them through. "Seeded in the crust. Waiting for a period of geological quiescence, so it could grow." Dr. Shim shrugs. "I think the Traveler did something paracausal to Venus. Something that cut across space and time. The Citadel seems to come from the past of a different Venus than our own. It doesn't have to make any sense by our logic, any more than the Moon's new gravity." That’s what I was referring too. A simulation? That’s...harder then copying brainwave patterns. You still need to digitize human brain function to base the simulation model on. You can’t simulate what you don’t understand ya know? Sure they are connected to a machine. That being obvious doesn’t translate to to the why and how, that’s speculation with what support? Anyone could of done it though. Before Collapse, during Collapse, post Collapse. Lot of people have shown interest in studying the Vex.

The Vex have shown to be capable of perfectly simulating human consciousness.

Humanity isn’t the Vex though. The best Humanity did was mind forking, which is how the Ishtar scientists made their clones to explore the Vex Network. They had as much access to Vex tech as Clovis

The Ishtar Scientists didn't make those 'clones' They isolated their own simulated selves from a Vex Goblin with help from Rasputin and then released them into the Vex Network. The Ishtar Collective had access to Vex technology as well, yes, but they were more interested in researching the Vex rather than the corporate viewpoint of Clovis Bray. CLEARLY there's some hidden link we'll discover in Beyond Light between the Exo and Vex, the question is what it is.

Mind forking for sane tests subjects seems to indicate they found another way to make clones. There could be a link, yeah sure. There are also lots of other possibilities that you’re dismissing out of hand. For instance. The Exo Stranger. She has been in our timeline for centuries, intervening in things. Our timeline gives her access to a system that hasn’t been steam rolled by the Darkness Vex of her time. Who said she wasn’t the one to do it? I’m open to it but a single image with zero context doesn’t indicate much of anything.

Firstly, again, those weren’t clones. They were literally Vex simulations. That’s the entire narrative built around those characters in the grimoire. For a recap, the scientists are studying a Vex Goblin and discover that it is running hundreds of simulations of them examining the Goblin and they are at first astonished by the accuracy of these simulations, only to be gripped by the fear that they themselves are a simulation. This prompts them to involve a Warmind, who easily overpowered the Goblin and frees the simulations. The scientists then release their simulated selves into the Vex Network in order to study it. As for the image having no context, it’s a Clovis Bray facility with a pod that contains an Exo body and a Vex construct. That’s enough context to establish that there is a link between the Exo and the Vex.

The ones in the Vex Network were not clones. I’m bringing up an entirely different subject. Vex 5. She wasn’t at Ishtar. The mind forking comes up later, at a different location with a different group of people doing something entirely different. When she was working on the Mind Ship project Mind forking is clearly not using simulation selves. It shows them hooked up to the same machine. You can’t answer who did it, when it was done, why it was done or what it means. Who was it what were they doing when was it done why was it done. All we know is where. So for you to say Exo minds are simulations and not digital copies, based off that single image with no context, then that’s a pretty wild spitball. You made a multilayered assumption, based off a still frame of a trailer. Likewise you avoid my mention of other possibilities... I mean if you won’t budge, you won’t budge. Not a problem either way.