I don't think they could have done that much about the timing, aside from having a general policy announced in advance: Just a couple weeks ago this "UAHF" thi

I don't think they could have done that much about the timing, aside from having a general policy announced in advance: Just a couple weeks ago this "UAHF" thing was something Bitmain saying they would only do if BIP148 resulted in a split chain (which seemed pretty unlikely).