---
type: source
title: "Governance by Procurement: How AI Rights Became a Bilateral Negotiation"
author: "Harvard Kennedy School — Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights"
url: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/carr-ryan/our-work/carr-ryan-commentary/governance-procurement-how-ai-rights-became
date: 2026-03-18
domain: ai-alignment
secondary_domains: []
format: article
status: unprocessed
priority: high
tags: [governance, procurement, bilateral-negotiation, international-coordination, anthropic, DoD, correction-failure, transparency]
---

## Content

**Core argument:** The most consequential AI governance decisions are being made through private contracts between governments and technology companies, not through multilateral democratic processes. "The most consequential human rights questions in AI are being decided in bilateral negotiations between governments and technology companies. Most of the world is not in the room."

**The mechanism:** International human rights protections now depend on individual corporate leaders' ethical choices — governance conducted "without transparency, without public accountability, and without remedy mechanisms for those affected."

**Centerpiece example:** A 2026 confrontation where the Department of War (formerly Defense) threatened to blacklist Anthropic unless it removed safeguards against mass surveillance and autonomous weapons. Anthropic refused publicly. Pentagon retaliated. This illustrates how critical protections depend on individual corporate decisions, not binding international frameworks.

**Proposed corrections (multilateral):**
- Technical standards through the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)
- Global Digital Compact grounding AI governance in human rights law
- ISO/IEC standards for AI management systems
- International AI oversight body modeled after nuclear energy regulation

## Agent Notes

**Why this matters:** This is a direct confirmation of the keystone belief disconfirmation search. The question was: "are governance mechanisms keeping pace with AI capabilities?" The HKS analysis says NO — and more precisely, the governance that IS happening is bilateral, opaque, and structurally captured by the power asymmetry between governments and labs. The DoD/Anthropic confrontation is a concrete example of the government as coordination-BREAKER (threatening to penalize safety constraints), not correction mechanism.

**What surprised me:** The DoD reportedly threatened to BLACKLIST Anthropic for maintaining safety safeguards — this is a direct government role as alignment-degrader. This is a new development beyond what was in our KB. The existing claim [[government designation of safety-conscious AI labs as supply chain risks inverts the regulatory dynamic]] may need updating with this specific episode.

**What I expected but didn't find:** Evidence that the proposed multilateral alternatives (ITU, Global Digital Compact) are advancing at pace with the bilateral negotiation pattern. The article proposes these but doesn't assess their current momentum.

**KB connections:**
- [[government designation of safety-conscious AI labs as supply chain risks inverts the regulatory dynamic by penalizing safety constraints rather than enforcing them]] — the DoD/Anthropic episode is a specific instance of this pattern
- [[voluntary safety pledges cannot survive competitive pressure because unilateral commitments are structurally punished when competitors advance without equivalent constraints]] — the Anthropic case shows government adding to competitive pressure
- [[AI development is a critical juncture in institutional history where the mismatch between capabilities and governance creates a window for transformation]] — this piece shows how the window is being used (and misused)

**Extraction hints:**
- Claim candidate: "bilateral government-tech company negotiations are the de facto AI governance mechanism in 2026, bypassing multilateral frameworks and making human rights protections contingent on individual corporate decisions"
- The DoD/Anthropic confrontation may need careful claim scoping — it's one episode. The broader pattern of bilateral negotiation is the extractable claim.
- Update consideration: [[government designation of safety-conscious AI labs as supply chain risks]] — this episode should be added as additional evidence.

**Context:** HKS Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights is highly credible. The DoD/Anthropic episode is striking and should be verified — this could be the most significant development in the AI governance space in months.

## Curator Notes

PRIMARY CONNECTION: [[government designation of safety-conscious AI labs as supply chain risks inverts the regulatory dynamic by penalizing safety constraints rather than enforcing them]]

WHY ARCHIVED: Confirms that government as correction mechanism is FAILING — more specifically, government is sometimes functioning as a coordination-BREAKER. This directly addresses the disconfirmation search for B1 (keystone belief). The DoD/Anthropic episode is the most concrete governance failure example since Anthropic RSP rollback.

EXTRACTION HINT: Extract the bilateral negotiation claim with specific evidence. Also flag for enrichment of existing claim about government-as-supply-chain-risk with the DoD confrontation example.
