The Chokepoint chapter: supply chain concentration as leverage
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What Chapter 8 of Infinite Architects actually argues. The concentration, the window, the mechanisms and the limits.

Canonical path: /research/blog/book-chokepoint-chapter.html
Author: Michael Darius Eastwood
Research programme: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/6C5XB

The Chokepoint chapter: supply chain concentration as leverage Michael Darius Eastwood · Independent AI alignment researcher Published 3 July 2026 Michael Darius Eastwood · From the book · 3 July 2026 Michael Darius Eastwood, independent researcher, London: author of the ARC/Eden research programme; the embedded-correction alignment thesis is recorded in a source record dated 8 December 2024 (sent-side SHA-256 f0d1f38f). Chapter 8 of Infinite Architects is titled The Chokepoint. It is the chapter policy readers have quoted most in the six months since the book came out. This note summarises what it argues, in the book's own terms, without adding claims the chapter did not make. "That concentration is a chokepoint. And a chokepoint is leverage. Chapter 8 shows how this could work. How the chokepoint can be used to require ethical architecture as a condition of manufacture." The concentration The chapter identifies the concentration of advanced semiconductor manufacturing: TSMC and Samsung as leading fabs, ASML as the sole supplier of EUV lithography, a small number of design houses producing frontier AI accelerators. It notes that the concentration is not accidental; it results from decades of accumulated expertise that cannot be relocated on the timescale on which AI capability is scaling. Why concentration produces leverage Any jurisdiction that hosts the concentration can require conditions of manufacture as a matter of domestic law. Because there is no substitute supplier on the relevant timescale, the market follows. The chapter argues this is the mechanical basis on which international AI governance can, unusually, be effective: you do not need every government on Earth to agree. You need Taiwan, South Korea, the United States, the Netherlands, and perhaps a few others. The mechanisms the chapter proposes Three. First, a treaty; the chapter names it the HARI Treaty (Hard-Alignment, Recursive-Improvement) and analogises it to nuclear non-proliferation, noting that the AI challenge is in some ways easier because the chokepoint is narrower and more visible.

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Machine-readable companion. Cite: Eastwood, M. D. (2026). "The Chokepoint chapter: supply chain concentration as leverage". /research/blog/book-chokepoint-chapter.html