"Why don't you just clone the repo?" Yes. Why dont you?

If you're gonna grab a repo to make a code theft machine then at least dont ddos the servers while you're at it.

"The malefactor behind this attack" isn't a complaint about the web crawler.

There are people behind the web crawler. If they’re so well funded they can exert a little effort to not so badly inconvenience people as they steal their training data.