Concentration ↑ · institutional
Centralised AI project
Merging frontier development into one state-funded project reduces failure modes and absorbs race pressure by being the only game.
Mechanism
Consolidate talent and compute into a single CERN-for-AI or national Manhattan-style project with a defined principal.
If it succeeds: what binds next
One project owns frontier capability. The project's principal now holds concentrated authority. The question of how to legitimate that authority was deferred.
A strategy that produces a worse next problem than the one it solved has not done durable work.
Self-undermining threshold
overshoot riskWhen one state's consolidation triggers mirror projects.
Rivals build their own centralised projects rather than accept one. The supposed benefit (single actor easier to govern) dissolves; the concentration-risk cost multiplies.
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.
People on the record
3Profiled figures appear first, with their tier in small caps. Each face links to the person and their full quote record. Tag: centralised-project.
Leopold Aschenbrenner
Deep ML / safety technical · Known across the AI/safety field
Sam Hammond
Foundation for American Innovation senior economist
Samo Burja
Bismarck Analysis founder; civilizational decline theorist
Coordinates
Conflicts, grouped by mechanism
4Lever opposition
same lever, opposite pullThe pair's primary lever is the same; they pull it in opposite directions. A portfolio containing both is internally incoherent on that lever.
Frame opposition
incompatible premisesThe strategies accept different premises about what AI is or what the binding problem is. They conflict not on lever choice but on the frame that makes lever choice sensible.
Complements, grouped by mechanism
4Stage-sequenced
one sets up the otherThe pair is phase-offset: one acts before the transition, the other during or after. The first creates the conditions under which the second binds.
Same-lever reinforce
same lever, same pull, different mechanismBoth strategies pull the same lever in the same direction by different means. They stack: doing both amplifies the pull, at the cost of double-counting in portfolio audits.
Same phase, different layer
same stage, distinct leversBoth 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.
Same-lever twins
1Both 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.
Axis position
Source note: Centralised AI project strategy.md