“5 “Plan A” scenarios” by Dave Orr

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Recorded13 Jul 2026

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https://ai-2040.com/ is a compelling look at one path forward in a world where the US decides to cooperate with China to slow down transformative AI, to buy us time to do it safely. (Ok, it has a bunch of potential paths forward, but one key path involving cooperation.) To me, the key insight in Plan A is that you need a set of layered defenses, a full stack that covers what you govern (e.g. chips, weights, capabilities, outcomes), how you verify (e.g. hardware, facilities, inspectors), and incentives. The exact proposal for centralizing compute in specific non-party countries with the military staring at them is useful (is is plausible?), but I thought it would be an interesting exercise to think of other places you might govern or verify, and other incentive structures. So here's a list: Compute is controlled at the chip level, not at the datacenter level. Chips are manufactured with integrated monitoring that can detect training. Chips themselves are carefully tracked and have remote killswitches, enforced at the fabs (of which there are a very small number, so verification is relatively easy). This is not a new idea, and in fact I think something like [...] --- First published: July 13th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7HHKaD3BdsfHX7doz/5-plan-a-scenarios --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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