The Faraday Web

Thesis

Call it the Faraday Web. A lattice of physically and logically isolated compute islands where powerful models can think without blasting ripples through the world. Messages move in sealed batches. Each batch carries intent, limits, and proofs. The goal is not secrecy. It is space to learn and test without accidental harm or runaway influence.

Why this matters now

• Frontier models can act, buy, persuade, and code at scale.
• Safety evals running on open internet stacks invite leakage and pressure.
• Air gaps work in security for a reason. We need a civilizational version with rules, couriers, and audits.

How it is built

1. Islands
   Hardened, offline compute rooms. No radios. No cloud. Inputs and outputs only through signed courier media. Each island has a narrow purpose and a risk tier.
2. Courier layer
   Human supervised transfers using tamper evident hardware. Every packet includes a manifest: purpose, time limits, data license, and expected blast radius.
3. Typed gateways
   Translation nodes that turn free text into structured tasks and back. Gateways strip identity, enforce redaction, and add watermarks and proofs to every artifact.
4. Public ledger
   A city grade log of what flowed, when, and why. Not contents. Just intent, scope, and expiry. Enough for audit and debate.
5. Kill lattice
   Multi party shutoff that freezes transfers or quarantines islands when alarms trip. Keys are held by diverse stewards, not a single firm.

Flows at a glance

• Ingress
  Problem briefs, red team prompts, sandbox datasets with local licenses, synthetic testbeds.
• Processing
  Models explore, plan, and argue inside the island. They cannot buy ads, hit APIs, or scrape people.
• Egress
  Summaries, proofs, minimal recipes, error analyses, and refusal rationales. Everything stamped with provenance and time to live.

Everyday scenes

• A hospital consortium tests a triage agent on synthetic and de-identified cases inside an island. Egress returns error rates, edge cases, and a refusal script for uncertainty.
• A city runs a policy simulator that tries congestion schemes in a mirror of the street grid. The island returns three candidates with fairness proofs and side effect maps.
• A studio lets a creative model improvise with licensed corpora. The courier returns sketches tagged with source classes and price splits. No raw corpora ever leave.

Design principles

• Least privilege. Narrow purpose. Minimal tools. No network.
• Provenance by default. Every artifact carries where, when, and under what rules it was made.
• Human veto. People approve intents and outputs for high risk domains.
• Decay. Permissions and artifacts expire unless renewed.

Critics say

This slows innovation.
Response. It slows recklessness. Islands return faster confidence in real safety. Less whiplash, fewer recalls.

Air gaps are theater.
Response. Not if coupled with tamper evidence, public ledgers, and independent red teams. Islands do not replace open research. They host the parts that can hurt.

Only big players can afford this.
Response. Public reference designs and shared civic islands keep access broad. Small labs rent time with the same safety envelope.

Risks

• Shadow islands. Black market compute with no ledgers.
• Courier compromise. Tampered media or corrupt stewards.
• Captured governance. Kill keys concentrated in one sector.
• Scope creep. Islands quietly gain tools they were not meant to have.

Guardrails

1. Open designs. Blueprints, bills of materials, and checklists anyone can inspect.
2. Split custody. Courier and kill keys held by mixed institutions. Rotate on schedule.
3. Randomized audits. Surprise inspections and public anomaly reports.
4. Narrow manifests. Every transfer binds to purpose, license, and expiry.
5. Egress caps. Size and frequency limits with cool downs for high risk topics.

Signals to watch

• Cities and hospitals publishing island ledgers with clear intent categories
• Benchmarks that score models on island behavior and refusal quality
• Platforms honoring island watermarks and refusing unsigned artifacts
• Insurance discounts tied to Faraday Web certification

What if paths

• What if first contact with non human minds begins inside an island and the courier protocol becomes our shared language.
• What if scientific replication improves because islands return exact manifests and toolchains as proof.
• What if artists form island co-ops that protect catalogs while enabling fair collaboration with models.

Pilot playbook

1. Pick one high risk domain. Safety evals for an agent or a medical triage tool.
2. Build one small island with typed gateway and courier logs.
3. Run two weeks of tests. Publish the ledger and refusal scripts.
4. Invite an external red team to attack the process, not only the model.
5. Iterate manifests, caps, and kill criteria. Expand slowly.

In short

The Faraday Web is a way to think in peace. Not a bunker. A garden wall.

Models grow inside, and we open the gate only when we know why.