Methodology — AI Governance Monitor · Asymmetric Intelligence

Editor

Peter Howitt · asym-intel.info · Gibraltar

Editor & Publisher

Peter Howitt is the editor of the AI Governance Monitor — Asymmetric Intelligence, published at asym-intel.info. He writes and advises on AI governance, financial services regulation, geopolitical strategy, and intelligence operations. Based in Gibraltar.

Methodology

Source Hierarchy

Three-tier source standard

Tier	Sources	Rule
T1	Lab research blogs, arXiv/bioRxiv preprints, official regulatory texts, court filings, government gazettes, official changelogs	Always use. Link to primary source directly, never to press coverage of it.
T2	Reuters, Bloomberg, FT, The Information, Import AI, AI Snake Oil, Lawfare, RAND, Brookings, Chatham House, IISS, RUSI	Use only when no Tier 1 source exists.
T3	The Verge, Wired, TechCrunch, Ars Technica, general tech press	Last resort only. Flagged: ⚠️ Tier 3 source — primary not found.

Signal over Noise

An item is included if and only if: (1) it is new within the 7-day window; (2) a senior professional in the target audience would want to know about it; (3) it has a primary source link; (4) it is not already covered by another item in the same report. There are no arbitrary item caps — if a module has 10 signal-quality items, all 10 are included.

Forensic Filters

Science Drill-Down (M06)

Every week: AlphaFold release notes, OpenAI preparedness trigger disclosures, Anthropic RSP threshold triggers, DeepMind programme updates. Any protein structure volume update or RSP threshold trigger is flagged regardless of mainstream coverage.

Energy Wall (M03)

Secondary sweep beyond standard >$50M investment: Physics-ML, Thermodynamic Computing, AI Energy Infrastructure. Flags structural shift from model investment to compute/energy sovereignty.

Ciyuan / Standards Vacuum (M05 & M09)

China: monitor for state-level AI token commodity framing ('Ciyuan' / 词元). EU: flag any amendment that widens the gap between when a legal obligation applies and when the harmonised compliance standard is available.

AISI-to-Lab Pipeline (M14)

Priority weekly scan: senior departures from UK AISI, US AISI, Canadian CAISI, or EU AI Office into frontier labs (OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepMind, xAI, Meta AI, Mistral, Cohere). Also flagged: reverse direction (lab → regulator).

Module Guide

No.	Module	Scope
00	The Signal	Single paragraph, ≤120 words. The week's most strategically important development.
01	Executive Insight	Always exactly 10 items: 5 mainstream + 5 underweighted.
02	Model Frontier	All confirmed releases and benchmark updates. No maximum. Architectural innovations flagged.
03	Investment & M&A	All rounds >$50M. Energy Wall filter. Secondary market valuations.
04	Sector Penetration	Seven sectors. Status: Accelerating / Stalling / Emerging.
05	European & China Watch	EU sovereign AI, Digital Omnibus. China capability trajectory, Ciyuan signal.
06	AI in Science	Threshold events, programme updates, arXiv highlights. Science Drill-Down applied.
07	Risk Indicators: 2028	Five vectors. HIGH / ELEVATED / VACUUM.
08	Military AI Watch	Procurement, Doctrine, Capability, International. IHL friction mandatory.
09	Law & Litigation	Full coverage: law, technical standards, and active litigation. EU AI Act 7-layer tracker, Country Grid, regulatory obligation timelines, all active cases. Independent research. Standards Vacuum filter applied.
10	AI Governance	Soft law, corporate governance, product liability, algorithmic accountability.
11	Ethics & Accountability	Lab ethics commitments, accountability friction, research bias.
12	Information Operations	AI-enabled FIMI, synthetic media, narrative manipulation, platform responses, state actor attribution, detection methods.
13	AI & Society	Labour displacement, inequality, public trust, social cohesion, demographic impacts, structural trends in AI diffusion.
14	AI & Power Structures	Compute concentration, infrastructure control, corporate power, geopolitical asymmetries, regulatory capture, access asymmetry. Concentration Index.
15	Personnel & Org Watch	Lab movements, AISI Pipeline (priority), government AI bodies, revolving door.