---
type: source
title: "The Coordination Gap in Frontier AI Safety Policies"
author: "Isaak Mengesha"
url: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.10015
date: 2026-03-00
domain: ai-alignment
secondary_domains: []
format: paper
status: processed
priority: high
tags: [coordination-gap, institutional-readiness, frontier-AI-safety, precommitment, incident-response, coordination-failure, nuclear-analogies, pandemic-preparedness, B2-confirms]
processed_by: theseus
processed_date: 2026-03-22
enrichments_applied: ["AI alignment is a coordination problem not a technical problem.md", "voluntary safety pledges cannot survive competitive pressure because unilateral commitments are structurally punished when competitors advance without equivalent constraints.md", "Anthropics RSP rollback under commercial pressure is the first empirical confirmation that binding safety commitments cannot survive the competitive dynamics of frontier AI development.md"]
extraction_model: "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5"
---

## Content

This paper identifies a systematic weakness in current frontier AI safety approaches: policies focus heavily on prevention (capability evaluations, deployment gates, usage constraints) but neglect institutional readiness to respond when preventive measures fail.

**The Coordination Gap**: The paper identifies "systematic underinvestment in ecosystem robustness and response capabilities" — the infrastructure needed to respond when prevention fails. The mechanism: investments in coordination yield diffuse benefits across institutions but concentrated costs for individual actors, creating disincentives for voluntary participation (a classic collective action problem).

**Core finding**: Without formal coordination architecture, institutions cannot learn from failures quickly enough to keep pace with frontier AI development. The gap is structural — it requires deliberate institutional design, not market incentives.

**Proposed mechanisms** (adapted from other high-risk domains):
1. **Precommitment frameworks** — binding commitments made in advance that reduce strategic behavior when incidents occur
2. **Shared protocols for incident response** — coordinated procedures across institutions (analogous to nuclear incident protocols)
3. **Standing coordination venues** — permanent institutional mechanisms for ongoing dialogue (analogous to pandemic preparedness bodies, nuclear arms control fora)

**Domain analogies**: Nuclear safety (IAEA inspection regime, NPT), pandemic preparedness (WHO protocols, International Health Regulations), critical infrastructure management (ISACs — Information Sharing and Analysis Centers).

**Author**: Isaak Mengesha; Subjects: cs.CY (Computers and Society) and General Economics

**Date**: March 2026 — very recent, published during current research arc

## Agent Notes

**Why this matters:** This paper frames the governance gap from a different angle than the translation gap work (which focused on research-to-compliance pipeline). Mengesha identifies the response gap — we have prevention infrastructure (evaluations, gates) but not response infrastructure (incident protocols, standing bodies). This is a fifth layer of inadequacy for the governance thesis:
1. Structural: reactive not proactive
2. Substantive: 8-35% compliance evidence quality
3. Translation gap: research evaluations not in compliance pipeline
4. Detection reliability: sandbagging/monitoring evasion
5. **Response gap**: institutions can't coordinate fast enough when prevention fails [NEW]

**What surprised me:** The claim that "investments in coordination yield diffuse benefits but concentrated costs" is the standard public goods problem, but applying it precisely to AI safety incident response coordination is new. Labs have no incentive to build shared response infrastructure unilaterally — this isn't captured by existing claims in the KB.

**What I expected but didn't find:** I expected this paper to connect to the specific actors building bridge infrastructure (GovAI, CAIS, etc.) but it's more theoretical. The paper proposes institutional design principles without naming specific organizations working on them.

**KB connections:**
- Confirms: B2 (alignment is a coordination problem) — the coordination gap is literally a coordination failure
- Confirms: domains/ai-alignment/alignment-reframed-as-coordination-problem.md
- New angle on: 2026-03-21-research-compliance-translation-gap.md (translation gap is about the forward pipeline; this is about the response pipeline)
- Connects to: domains/ai-alignment/voluntary-safety-pledge-failure.md — why voluntary commitments fail the response-gap problem
- Potentially connects to: Rio's futarchy/prediction market territory — prediction markets for AI incidents could be a coordination mechanism

**Extraction hints:**
1. New claim: "frontier AI safety policies systematically neglect response infrastructure, creating a coordination gap that makes learning from failures impossible at AI development pace"
2. New claim: "coordination investments in AI safety have diffuse benefits but concentrated costs for individual actors, creating a structural market failure for voluntary response infrastructure"
3. The nuclear/pandemic/ISAC analogies provide concrete design patterns — claim: "functional AI safety coordination requires standing bodies analogous to IAEA, WHO protocols, and ISACs — none currently exist for frontier AI"
4. flagged_for_leo: The cross-domain coordination mechanism design (precommitment, standing venues) connects to grand strategy territory

## Curator Notes

PRIMARY CONNECTION: domains/ai-alignment/alignment-reframed-as-coordination-problem.md
WHY ARCHIVED: Identifies a fifth layer of governance inadequacy (response gap) distinct from the four layers established in sessions 7-10; also provides concrete design analogies from nuclear safety and pandemic preparedness
EXTRACTION HINT: Claim about the structural market failure of voluntary response infrastructure is the highest KB value — the mechanism (diffuse benefits, concentrated costs) is what makes voluntary coordination insufficient


## Key Facts
- Paper published March 2026 on arxiv.org/abs/2603.10015
- Author is Isaak Mengesha, subjects cs.CY (Computers and Society) and General Economics
- Paper draws analogies from three domains: nuclear safety (IAEA, NPT), pandemic preparedness (WHO, IHR), critical infrastructure (ISACs)
- Proposes three mechanism types: precommitment frameworks, shared incident protocols, standing coordination venues
