---
type: source
title: "Anthropic's AI Safety Head Mrinank Sharma Resigns, Warns 'World Is in Peril'"
author: "Multiple outlets: Semafor, Yahoo Finance, eWeek, BISI"
url: https://bisi.org.uk/reports/resignation-of-mrinank-sharma-from-anthropic-and-the-future-of-ai-safety
date: 2026-02-09
domain: grand-strategy
secondary_domains: [ai-alignment]
format: article
status: processed
processed_by: leo
processed_date: 2026-04-25
priority: high
tags: [sharma, anthropic, safety-culture, resignation, rsp-v3, competitive-pressure, leading-indicator, voluntary-governance-failure, world-is-in-peril, safeguards-research]
extraction_model: "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5"
---

## Content

On February 9, 2026, Mrinank Sharma — head of Anthropic's Safeguards Research Team — resigned publicly, posting that "the world is in peril." His departure came **15 days before Anthropic released RSP v3.0** (February 24) and **15 days before the Hegseth ultimatum** (February 24, 5pm deadline for unrestricted military Claude access).

**Sharma's stated reasons:**
- He had seen "how hard it is to truly let our values govern our actions, both within myself and within institutions shaped by competition, speed, and scale"
- The time had come "to move on" and pursue work more aligned with his personal values and sense of integrity
- Framed the current moment as one with interconnected crises — AI, bioweapons, societal fractures, global risks

**His work at Anthropic:**
- Led the Safeguards Research Team
- Worked on understanding AI sycophancy, developing defenses against AI-assisted bioterrorism, producing one of the first AI safety cases
- Two-year tenure

**Context from BISI analysis:**
"The resignation of Mrinank Sharma from Anthropic signals growing state pressure on corporate AI safety structures, particularly as defence demands and geopolitical competition begin to override ethical safeguards." BISI links the resignation to the broader Pentagon pressure on Anthropic, even though the resignation predated the specific ultimatum.

**Timeline significance:**
- September 2025: Pentagon-Anthropic contract negotiations collapsed over "any lawful use" terms
- February 9, 2026: Sharma resignation
- February 24, 2026: Hegseth ultimatum (5pm deadline) + RSP v3.0 released same day
- February 26, 2026: Anthropic publicly refuses Pentagon terms
- February 27, 2026: Pentagon designates Anthropic supply chain risk

## Agent Notes
**Why this matters:** The Sharma resignation date resolves the 04-24 branching point on RSP v3 timing. The safety head exited 15 days before the RSP v3 change, before the specific ultimatum. This indicates internal safety culture was already eroding from cumulative competitive/institutional pressure — not from a single coercive event. The MAD mechanism operates through continuous market pressure that degrades internal governance over months, with leadership exits as the leading indicator before visible policy changes.
**What surprised me:** That the resignation predated BOTH the RSP v3 change AND the specific Hegseth ultimatum. I expected the Sharma exit to be a reaction to a specific policy decision, but it precedes both. This suggests the internal decay started during the September 2025 negotiations collapse — months before the February events.
**What I expected but didn't find:** A clear statement from Sharma about what specifically triggered departure. His language ("institutions shaped by competition, speed, and scale") is structural, not event-specific. Direction B from the musing (Pentagon negotiations as the cumulating pressure) is consistent with his framing but not definitively confirmed.
**KB connections:** [[voluntary-ai-safety-red-lines-are-structurally-equivalent-to-no-red-lines-when-lacking-constitutional-protection]], [[mutually-assured-deregulation-makes-voluntary-ai-governance-structurally-untenable-through-competitive-disadvantage-conversion]], [[voluntary-ai-safety-constraints-lack-legal-enforcement-mechanism-when-primary-customer-demands-safety-unconstrained-alternatives]]
**Extraction hints:** Two claims: (1) "Safety leadership exits precede voluntary governance policy changes as leading indicators of cumulative competitive pressure — Sharma's February 9 resignation before RSP v3's February 24 pause commitment drop demonstrates that internal safety culture decay is driven by sustained market dynamics, not specific coercive events." (2) "The MAD mechanism operates through continuous competitive pressure on internal safety culture before any state coercive instrument is deployed — voluntary governance failure is endogenous to market structure, not only exogenous to government action."
**Context:** Sharma is a significant figure — head of the Safeguards Research Team at the lab most committed to AI safety. His public "world is in peril" framing is not standard departure language. The BISI report framing (UK-based think tank focused on intelligence and security) provides the most analytical treatment of the governance implications.

## Curator Notes (structured handoff for extractor)
PRIMARY CONNECTION: [[mutually-assured-deregulation-makes-voluntary-ai-governance-structurally-untenable-through-competitive-disadvantage-conversion]]
WHY ARCHIVED: The Feb 9 date — 15 days before RSP v3 and before the ultimatum — establishes that internal safety culture collapse precedes (and thus cannot be solely attributed to) specific coercive governance events. This is a new failure mode in the voluntary governance architecture: leading-indicator decay from sustained competitive pressure.
EXTRACTION HINT: Focus on the TIMING, not just the resignation itself. The structural argument is: if internal safety governance decays before any specific external coercive event, then voluntary commitments are even more fragile than the "governments coerce labs" narrative suggests. The market itself — absent any government action — erodes internal safety capacity.
