Proposal Explorer

Add claims to see which ones the mechanisms address.

Built for an adversarial prover

Whole-workload recomputation (reproducible packets), Remote detection of data centres and Network taps and certifiers

No new hardware needed

Remote detection of data centres

Failures since mitigated

• Verifier dictionary attacks on hashes in Network taps and certifiers ¹²

Attack testing records published testing for this use. It does not by itself show independent review, a formal proof or that a deployed system is secure.

• Remote detection of data centres: Analysis
• Network taps and certifiers: Analysis

Open significant failures

2 failures in 1 mechanism

• Output nondeterminism leaves covert capacity in Network taps and certifiers

  Hashing cannot remove information hidden in the outputs themselves. The Secure Gateway Device paper estimates that about 0.1 bit per token remains even with seed-synchronized replay checks. For a 200k-GPU inference cluster at full load (2,000 tokens per GPU per second), that is about 40 Mbit/s of covert egress, enough to move a 1 TB model in under three days. The paper names this the core remaining challenge and points to deterministic replay or active scrubbing of hardware-induced entropy. An independent study found that an adversary who chooses the prompts roughly doubles the bits leaked per token under Gumbel-based inference verification; see Bounding unexplained information in outputs. ^{12 19}

  Known failure · Theoretical argument · Significant · Open. On the record

  Related mechanism Operational use Deterministic and bit-exact inference: Deterministic replay is one of the two remedies the flaw's source names. A pointer, not evidence that this failure is mitigated. Add

  Related mechanism Research demo Bounding unexplained information in outputs: Bounds the hidden information outputs can carry by measuring what the declared computation fails to predict. A pointer, not evidence that this failure is mitigated. Add

• Residual side channels in simple passive setups in Network taps and certifiers

  Amodo's analysis of its own tapped prototype lists unvalidated header fields, timing of permitted traffic and variation in response formatting as residual channels, and concludes that the passive tap must be replaced by an active one. ¹⁵

  Known failure · Theoretical argument · Significant · Open. On the record

Scope limitations

• Spare compute is outside the scheme in Whole-workload recomputation (reproducible packets)

  The plan states that it does not verify that spare compute is not used for unapproved workloads, because this seems very challenging. Recomputation checks the correctness of declared work, not its completeness. ^{1 2}

  Scope limitation · Theoretical argument. On the record

  Related mechanism Proposed Proofs of useful work for capacity accounting: Proposed as one input to accounting for spare capacity on declared hardware. A pointer, not evidence that this failure is mitigated. Add

• Facilities can be disguised or hidden in Remote detection of data centres

  Halstead and Larsen discuss two ways to hide a facility. One is to disguise it as a legitimate industrial site. The other is to build it underground, with cooling that avoids visible heat plumes. They note that the underground option requires bespoke engineering. ⁷

  Scope limitation · Theoretical argument. On the record

• Small sites may not be detectable in Remote detection of data centres

  Halstead and Larsen conclude that a sufficiently small covert project could not be ruled out with confidence. In their estimates, the chance of detection is lower for smaller sites. Krawec notes that small data centres in existing buildings may lack the distinctive features of large facilities. ^{7 9}

  Scope limitation · Theoretical argument. On the record

  Related mechanism Proposed Chip registries and manufacturing records: Accounts for chips from the fab onwards, which does not depend on a site being visible. A pointer, not evidence that this failure is mitigated. Add

• Some links cannot be passively tapped in Network taps and certifiers

  Cankaya notes that copper-connected scale-up domains (for example NVL72 racks and TPU v7 cubes) are much harder to tap than fibre, and that optical budgets make passive taps impractical on 400GBASE-SR8 multimode links. Amodo found no taps advertised for 53 GBaud links as of May 2026. ^{13 20}

  Scope limitation · Open question. On the record

• Encrypted fabrics hide plaintext from both parties in Network taps and certifiers

  Cankaya notes that with TEE-protected sessions whose keys are ephemeral and managed inside the TEE, neither the operator nor the manufacturer can recover session keys after the session, so tapped traffic could not be opened for recomputation. For other encrypted fabrics, the operator can retain keys. ¹³

  Scope limitation · Open question. On the record

• Completeness rests on physical monitoring left out of scope in Network taps and certifiers

  The Secure Gateway Device paper assumes the facility is physically monitored, and states that the whole architecture depends on the device being the only communication channel. It names radio emanation, power-line signalling and thermal channels as covert channels beyond that scope. ¹²

  Scope limitation · Open question. On the record

  Related mechanism Proposed Side-channel suppression for isolated facilities: Addresses the radio, power-line and thermal channels that network-level designs leave out. A pointer, not evidence that this failure is mitigated. Add

Open questions

• Non-compliant work could be encoded inside compliant-looking packets in Whole-workload recomputation (reproducible packets)

  The plan notes that an AI company might try to encode a non-compliant workload inside a workload that looks compliant on the surface. ¹

  Open question · Theoretical argument. On the record

• Search for unknown sites is undemonstrated in Remote detection of data centres

  Krawec reports that telling data centres apart from other industrial facilities systematically is difficult. Automating detection would need large amounts of training imagery and a purpose-trained model. In Krawec's words, automated data-centre detection "remains primarily conceptual at present". ⁹

  Open question · Open question. On the record

Not yet demonstrated

Proposed Whole-workload recomputation (reproducible packets), Proposed Remote detection of data centres and Proposed Network taps and certifiers

Mechanisms on the map that are not in the proposal. Pointers, not recommendations. ?

• Operational use Deterministic and bit-exact inference Add
  • Bears on the open significant failure “Output nondeterminism leaves covert capacity” in Network taps and certifiers. Deterministic replay is one of the two remedies the flaw's source names.
  • Whole-workload recomputation (reproducible packets) waits on it. Workloads are not reproducible by default, and achieving reproducibility may cost performance.
  • Network taps and certifiers waits on it. Nondeterministic inference leaves covert capacity in outputs that hashing cannot remove.
• Research demo Bounding unexplained information in outputs Add
  • Bears on the open significant failure “Output nondeterminism leaves covert capacity” in Network taps and certifiers. Bounds the hidden information outputs can carry by measuring what the declared computation fails to predict.
• Research demo Tamper evidence for verifier devices Add
  • Network taps and certifiers waits on it. Taps and gateway devices need tamper-evident housing and physical monitoring so that traffic cannot bypass them.
• Proposed Side-channel suppression for isolated facilities Add
  • Network taps and certifiers waits on it. Radio, power-line and thermal channels are not addressed by network-level designs.
• Operational use Sampled inference recomputation Add
  • Network taps and certifiers depends on it.

Missing prerequisites

• Operational use Deterministic and bit-exact inference needed by Whole-workload recomputation (reproducible packets) and Network taps and certifiers Add
• Operational use Sampled inference recomputation needed by Network taps and certifiers Add
• Research demo Tamper evidence for verifier devices needed by Network taps and certifiers Add
• Proposed Side-channel suppression for isolated facilities needed by Network taps and certifiers Add

Shared foundations

• Deterministic and bit-exact inference relied on by Whole-workload recomputation (reproducible packets) and Network taps and certifiers

Blockers

12 blockers recorded

• Whole-workload recomputation (reproducible packets)
  • Workloads are not reproducible by default, and achieving reproducibility may cost performance. Performance & compatibility. Waits on Deterministic and bit-exact inference ¹
  • Network packets are not individually reproducible by default; making them so may need considerable software, firmware and hardware work. Amodo rates this 'not on track'. Performance & compatibility ⁴
  • All traffic must reach the recomputation server via network taps, and the server's integrity is critical. Hardware trust. Waits on Network taps and certifiers ^{1 4}
  • Recomputing training steps needs checkpoints: writing one at every step would cost more than 100% overhead, so Amodo's design needs a spare data-parallel replica that tracks the weights instead. Performance & compatibility ²
• Remote detection of data centres
  • Wide-area, automated detection of data centres is not yet practical and needs large training datasets. Coverage & hidden compute ⁹
  • No measured detection or false-alarm rates for finding undeclared facilities have been published. Adversarial validation ^{7 9}
  • Recent high-resolution imagery is costly, is limited by weather and needs trained analysts. Access & governance ⁹
• Network taps and certifiers
  • No complete verification tap has been demonstrated at production frontend link rates, and on the tested CPU no hash algorithm reached line rate with minimum-size frames. Performance & compatibility ^{20 21}
  • Nondeterministic inference leaves covert capacity in outputs that hashing cannot remove. Evidence binding. Waits on Deterministic and bit-exact inference ¹²
  • Taps and gateway devices need tamper-evident housing and physical monitoring so that traffic cannot bypass them. Hardware trust. Waits on Tamper evidence for verifier devices ^{12 14}
  • Radio, power-line and thermal channels are not addressed by network-level designs. Coverage & hidden compute. Waits on Side-channel suppression for isolated facilities ¹²
  • Red-teaming by specialists is called for but has not been reported. Adversarial validation ¹²

From the family or selected implementation's record. ?

Model weights

Depends on the design for Whole-workload recomputation (reproducible packets) and Network taps and certifiers.

Not involved: Remote detection of data centres.

Inputs and outputs

Depends on the design for Whole-workload recomputation (reproducible packets) and Network taps and certifiers.

Not involved: Remote detection of data centres.

Training data

Depends on the design for Whole-workload recomputation (reproducible packets) and Network taps and certifiers.

Not involved: Remote detection of data centres.

Whole-workload recomputation (reproducible packets)

• Proposed AI 2040 inference-only verification stack Proposed architecture, AI Futures Project

Remote detection of data centres

None on the map

Network taps and certifiers

• Proposed AI 2040 inference-only verification stack Proposed architecture, AI Futures Project
• Proposed Low-trust AI compute verification system overview Proposed architecture, Machine Intelligence Research Institute
• Proposed SASH confidential network logger Research prototype, Singapore AI Safety Hub (SASH)

1. Verification Plan, R. Dean (2026). Original
2. Example Schemes for Verifying High-Stakes AI Agreements, Amodo Design (2026). Original
3. Scaling Recomputation Inference Verification, Amodo Design (2026). Original
4. AI 2040 Plan A — Verification SITREP, Amodo Design (2026). Original
5. Get Involved in Verification, AI Futures Project (2026). Original
6. Proof-of-Learning is Currently More Broken Than You Think, C. Fang et al. (2023). Original
7. Covert AI Projects, B. Halstead & T. Larsen (2026). Original
8. Verifying International Agreements on AI: Six Layers of Verification for Rules on Large-Scale AI Development and Deployment, M. Baker et al. (2025). Original
9. Tracking Hyperscale AI Data Center Growth with Satellite Imagery, C. Krawec (2026). Original
10. Introducing the Frontier Data Centers Hub, Epoch AI (2025). Original
11. AI Data Centers Documentation – Methodology, Epoch AI (2026). Original
12. Fingerprinting All AI Cluster I/O Without Mutually Trusted Processors, N. Cankaya et al. (2026). Original
13. The Fundamentals and Feasibility of Secure Network Taps for Verifying AI Datacenter Use, N. Cankaya (2026). Original
14. A System Overview for Near-Term, Low-Trust AI Compute Verification, N. Cankaya (2026). Original
15. Fitting a Network TAP to our Inference Verification Prototype, Amodo Design (2026). Original
16. Amodo-Design/Inference-Recomputation-Prototype (GitHub repository), Amodo Design (2026). Original
17. inference-verification: Inference Verification Prototype, Singapore AI Safety Hub (SASH) (2026). Original
18. Internationalising AI Verification, Singapore AI Safety Hub (SASH) (2026). Original
19. Adversarial Entropy Inflation Against Gumbel-Based Inference Verification, N. Kezins (2026). Original
20. Network Tapping for AI Verification: A Technical Assessment, Amodo Design (2026). Original
21. Network Traffic Hashing, Amodo Design (2026). Original