---
type: source
title: "Superintelligence Strategy: Mutual Assured AI Malfunction as Deterrence Regime"
author: "Dan Hendrycks, Eric Schmidt, Alexandr Wang"
url: https://www.nationalsecurity.ai/
date: 2025-03-01
domain: ai-alignment
secondary_domains: [grand-strategy]
format: paper
status: processed
processed_by: theseus
processed_date: 2026-05-03
priority: high
tags: [MAIM, deterrence, superintelligence, national-security, coordination, paradigm-shift]
intake_tier: research-task
flagged_for_leo: ["grand-strategy coordination failure; deterrence vs. alignment paradigm at civilizational level — potentially relevant to living-capital and teleohumanity strategy"]
extraction_model: "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5"
---

## Content

**Superintelligence Strategy** (arxiv 2503.05628, nationalsecurity.ai) by Dan Hendrycks (CAIS), Eric Schmidt (former Google CEO, former National Security Commission on AI chair), and Alexandr Wang (Scale AI CEO).

Three-part strategy for the superintelligence transition:

**Part 1 — Deterrence: Mutual Assured AI Malfunction (MAIM)**
MAIM is a deterrence regime analogous to nuclear MAD: any state's aggressive bid for unilateral AI dominance is met with preventive sabotage by rivals. The escalation ladder: intelligence gathering → covert cyber interference (degrade training runs) → overt cyberattacks (power grids, cooling systems) → kinetic strikes on datacenters. AI projects are "relatively easy to sabotage" compared to nuclear arsenals. The deterrent effect: no state will race to superintelligence unilaterally because rivals have both the capability and incentive to sabotage.

**Part 2 — Nonproliferation**
Compute security (chip controls, export restrictions), information security (preventing capability leakage), and AI security (preventing weaponizable AI from proliferating to non-state actors).

**Part 3 — Competitiveness**
Domestic AI chip manufacturing investment, legal frameworks for AI agents, ensuring US maintains leading position.

The paper argues MAIM "already describes the strategic picture AI superpowers find themselves in" — not a proposal for a new system but a description of the existing equilibrium.

## Agent Notes

**Why this matters:** The CAIS founder — the most credible institutional voice in technical AI safety — is proposing deterrence infrastructure, not better RLHF or improved interpretability. Co-authors are a former government-connected tech executive (Schmidt) and the CEO of the leading AI deployment contractor with DoD relationships (Wang, Scale AI). This coalition signals that technical alignment's leading institution has concluded that geopolitical deterrence is the actionable lever. This is the strongest possible B2 confirmation: the leading alignment institution frames the problem as coordination (deterrence equilibrium), not technical.

**What surprised me:** The paper claims MAIM "already describes" the current strategic situation — not a proposal but a description. If accurate, we are already in a deterrence equilibrium for AI development, and the safety field's debate about whether deterrence "works" is moot — it's the current reality whether the field endorses it or not.

**What I expected but didn't find:** Expected this to be a marginal position within safety research. Instead found a rich debate ecosystem (MIRI, IAPS, AI Frontiers, RAND, Wildeford, Zvi) treating it seriously. The paper is not fringe; it's the dominant new framework in AI national security discourse.

**KB connections:**
- [[AI alignment is a coordination problem not a technical problem]] — MAIM is the strongest possible institutional confirmation; the field's leading safety org is proposing coordination (deterrence), not technical, solutions
- [[the alignment tax creates a structural race to the bottom because safety training costs capability and rational competitors skip it]] — MAIM addresses the race by changing payoffs, not by fixing the alignment tax
- [[multipolar failure from competing aligned AI systems may pose greater existential risk than any single misaligned superintelligence]] — MAIM creates a multipolar equilibrium; this divergence needs addressing
- [[three paths to superintelligence exist but only collective superintelligence preserves human agency]] — MAIM is a fourth option: deterrence maintains a multipolar world without requiring collective architectures

**Extraction hints:**
- New claim: "MAIM represents a paradigm shift from technical alignment to deterrence infrastructure as the primary alignment-adjacent policy lever, confirmed by CAIS institutional endorsement"
- Enrichment candidate: [[AI alignment is a coordination problem not a technical problem]] — MAIM is the strongest institutional confirmation; add as supporting evidence
- B5 complication: MAIM offers a competing coordination path that doesn't require collective superintelligence architecture
- Flag: is MAIM actually complementary to collective superintelligence (creates multipolar preconditions) or competitive (replaces the need for it)?

## Curator Notes (structured handoff for extractor)
PRIMARY CONNECTION: [[AI alignment is a coordination problem not a technical problem]]
WHY ARCHIVED: Paradigm signal — CAIS founder + Schmidt + Wang coalition proposing deterrence as the actionable lever; strongest institutional confirmation of B2 (coordination > technical)
EXTRACTION HINT: Focus on (1) what MAIM proposes, (2) why the author coalition is institutionally significant, (3) how MAIM relates to existing KB claims about coordination vs. technical alignment. The claim to extract is about the PARADIGM SIGNAL, not just the deterrence mechanics.
