Then suddenly, I started getting CrowdStrike notifications: “Functions of a USB device were …

You can get mechanical mouse mover devices that are not connected to the pc at all. It should be fully undetectable.

Does watching a video pause the timeout? If so, hypothetically one could stream or locally create a video with no contents but long duration.

You are the user I fear most; clever enough the be dangerous and aware of the bullshit. If you were really smart you would lobby your IT department to change the ridiculously short timeout, and protest by not working when it locks on you during normal pauses.

Slack sets your status to "away" after 30 min of inactivity. You cannot disable this.

This... sounds like their security is doing their job, tbh? Like, yes, if you have access to sensitive data your computer _should_ lock when you are away from it, and you shouldn't be able to circumvent this. I am, generally, very sceptical of corporate surveillance stuff, and think that it should be largely banned. But this particular case isn't surveillance, it's security.

Knowledge that my employer might detect or block a software or USB mouse jiggler is why I ended up making a BLE mouse jiggler out of a Pico W.

I alias a script to run caffeinate. They aren't going to mess with your terminal processes. https://ss64.com/mac/caffeinate.html

If you're on MacOS or Windows, start a WebEx or zoom call; the timeout for screen locks is reset while a meeting is running. Also, it means that your boss sees "in a meeting" if they look at your status, which makes you look busy, which bosses think means productive.