The Court Inside the Comparison

Calls to govern advanced AI on the model of nuclear nonproliferation invoke a specific arrangement: states negotiate, inspectors enter facilities, and the treaty system distinguishes recognized nuclear-weapon states from everyone else.

The familiar danger you compare a new technology to helps decide who will be allowed to govern it. The nuclear comparison foregrounds possession, transfer, and inspection. An institution can look like the obvious authority because the problem has been stated in its vocabulary. Its procedures may become defaults before their suitability for the new technology has been established. The new machine arrives at an old courthouse; the court’s jurisdiction can seem settled while the nature of the case remains disputed.

The same transfer occurs through other forms of framing. Treat drug use chiefly as crime and police and courts become the default authorities. Treat it chiefly as illness and clinicians and public-health agencies gain standing. The substance in the bloodstream need not change. What changes is whose assessment can justify intervention, which evidence matters, and whether the person affected is expected to answer as a suspect or cooperate as a patient.

A comparison may, however, recognize a genuine fit rather than manufacture legitimacy. If a technology depends on identifiable facilities, institutions already equipped to inspect them may have a sound claim to jurisdiction, even without the nuclear comparison. Existing expertise may be costly to rebuild. But similarity of danger and suitability of governor remain separate claims. Evidence for one does not automatically establish the other.

This helps explain why disputes over descriptions become territorial before any rules are written. They concern which institution must justify its authority and which may presume it. Once an institution becomes the default, everyone else may have to petition it for a hearing—including those who dispute its right to decide.

The analogy does not issue the orders. It helps decide who will.