AGI Strategies
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Concentration ↑ · institutional

Military primacy

Strategic competition between states dominates AI development; the state with the most capable AI is best positioned to secure safety and impose constraints on others.

Mechanism

Treat AI as a national security priority; pursue autonomous systems, cyber offence, and strategic decision support as state-led capability.

If it succeeds: what binds next

One military holds AI primacy. Authority flows from capability; counter-coalitions form by default. The binding problem is whether primacy can be consolidated before the coalition forms.

A strategy that produces a worse next problem than the one it solved has not done durable work.

Falsification signal

Catastrophic outcome under a race dynamic that the strategy predicted would be stable.

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

When one state's pursuit triggers mirror pursuit by rivals.

Every participant including the original mover races under worse conditions than they started in. Same structure as the race strategy, more acute.

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

3

Profiled figures appear first, with their tier in small caps. Each face links to the person and their full quote record. Tag: military-primacy.

  • Brian Schimpf

    Anduril Industries CEO

  • Katherine Boyle

    Katherine Boyle

    Andreessen Horowitz; American Dynamism

  • Trae Stephens

    Trae Stephens

    Anduril co-founder; Founders Fund partner

Load-bearing commitments

Worldview positions this strategy quietly assumes. If the claim fails empirically or philosophically, the strategy loses its target or its premise.

Authority

Authority flows from capability.

Fails if: If capability without legitimacy triggers counter-coalitions, primacy destabilises itself.

Coordinates

Primary leverConcentration (Concentrate)
Acts oninstitutional
Coercionunilateral force
Actor in controlhumans
Time horizonduring transition
Legitimacy sourcestate

Conflicts, grouped by mechanism

4

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.

MultipolarityDistributed builders

Frame opposition

incompatible premises

The 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.

International AI agencyArms control treaty

Complements, grouped by mechanism

4

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.

Race to aligned superintelligenceAcceleration

Same-lever reinforce

same lever, same pull, different mechanism

Both 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.

Centralised AI project

Stage-sequenced

one sets up the other

The pair is phase-offset: one acts before the transition, the other during or after. The first creates the conditions under which the second binds.

Closed weights mandate

Same-lever twins

1

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.

Public AItwin

Axis position

What the strategy acts onInstitutional
Coercion levelUnilateral force
Actor in controlHumans as principals
Time horizonDuring transition
Legitimacy sourceState

Source note: Military primacy strategy.md