Speed ↓ · institutional

Bureaucratic slowdown

Time itself is safety and procedural gates produce time in ways substantive regulation cannot, while also generating audit trails.

Mechanism

Deploy mandatory environmental review, privacy impact assessment, audits, ethics sign-offs, licensing, and procurement preference as friction layers.

Falsification signal

Procedural burden implemented and routinely evaded (pre-1970s environmental impact analogue).

A strategy held without a falsification signal is not strategy; it is affiliation. Continued support after this signal lands is identity, not bet. See the identity diagnostic.

Self-undermining threshold

overshoot risk

Without substantive teeth behind the paperwork.

Labs comply with paperwork and ignore the intent.

Every strategy has a stable region where it reinforces itself and an unstable region where pursuit defeats it. The threshold between them is usually narrower than advocates acknowledge.

Historical analogue

Pharmaceutical · Approval timelines

Every strategy inherits a plausible ceiling from its precedent. The analogue conditions the realistic reach.

Produced

Filtered unsafe submissions; established review culture.

Did not produce

Under sufficient pressure, approval pathways compress; paperwork-without-substance failure.

Addresses 1 failure scenario

all scenarios →

Evaluation abandonment under pressure

Coordinates

Primary leverSpeed (Slow)

Acts oninstitutional

Coercionfriction

Actor in controlhumans

Time horizonpre transition

Legitimacy sourcestate

Conflicts, grouped by mechanism

Lever opposition

same lever, opposite pull

The pair's primary lever is the same; they pull it in opposite directions. A portfolio containing both is internally incoherent on that lever.

AccelerationRace to aligned superintelligence

Complements, grouped by mechanism

Same phase, different layer

same stage, distinct levers

Both are active in the same phase of the transition but act on different layers (model vs institution vs culture). They cover different failure modes inside the same window.

Governance firstInternational AI agency

Shared authority

same legitimacy source

Different levers, same legitimacy source (democratic, state, technical, market). The pair hangs together under one kind of authority; it stands or falls with that authority.

Criminal liabilityLiability driven safety

Same-side diversification

same side, different lever

Both act on the same side (AI or world) but pull distinct levers. They cover several failure modes on that side while leaving the other side uncovered.

Whistleblower primacy

Same-lever twins

Both use the same lever in the same direction. Usually redundant inside a portfolio: each dollar or effort unit only buys one lever pull, even if two strategies are named.

Compute governancetwinEnergy choke pointtwinPausetwinSabotagetwin

Axis position

What the strategy acts onInstitutional

Coercion levelFriction

Actor in controlHumans as principals

Time horizonPre-transition

Legitimacy sourceState

Source note: Bureaucratic slowdown strategy.md