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Sprint projectSep 14, 2026Manchester, United Kingdom

Containment as a Governor: A third-party-verifiable containment standard for autonomous agents in safety-critical operations, worked through a theoretical…

aaron goulden · Team 1

Submitted to AI Incident Response Sprint. Sprint projects are early-stage work by participants, not Apart Research publications.

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Report: Containment as a Governor: A third-party-verifiable containment standard for autonomous agents in safety-critical operations, worked through a theoretical…

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The July 2026 sandbox escape happened through *the one network egress the sandbox permitted* [1]; a single permitted path is a single point of failure, and a single overseer of a more-capable agent lacks the *requisite variety* to regulate it [8, 9]. We convert that into a nine-control matrix whose defining property is the sprint's own Track 1 bar — **a third party can verify compliance without access to the lab's network** — and we test it against a worked, safety-critical deployment: an air traffic control centre run by AI agents under human oversight.

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How much would this matter for AI safety if it worked? How innovative is it? For scores of 4-5: is this actually new to the field, or replicating recent work?

Scoring guide
  1. 1Negligible. No clear problem addressed, or no meaningful novelty.
  2. 2Limited. Addresses a real problem but with a generic or well-trodden approach. Incremental at best.
  3. 3Moderate. Clear problem with a reasonable approach; some novelty in framing or method beyond routine application of existing tools.
  4. 4Significant. Important problem with an original approach, or identifies a neglected problem area. A valuable contribution others could build on.
  5. 5Exceptional. Tackles a critical AI safety problem with a genuinely novel approach, or opens a new research direction. Clear theory of change. You'd be excited to share this with researchers in the area.

How sound are methodology, implementation, and findings?

Scoring guide
  1. 1Seriously flawed. Methodology broken, results uninterpretable, or implementation doesn't work.
  2. 2Weak. Approach has significant gaps: missing validation, flawed experimental design, or incomplete implementation.
  3. 3Competent. Technically solid given the short duration. Methodology makes sense, results are interpretable, limitations acknowledged, work builds toward clear conclusions.
  4. 4Strong. Thorough methodology with convincing validation. Results clearly support conclusions. Immediately useful for future work.
  5. 5Exceptional. Ambitious scope executed rigorously. Surprising findings, novel methods, or unusually robust validation.

How clearly are work, findings, and impact potential communicated?

Scoring guide
  1. 1Incomprehensible. Cannot determine what the project is actually claiming or doing.
  2. 2Hard to follow. Key information buried, missing, or diluted by excessive length. Significant effort to extract main points.
  3. 3Clear enough. Can understand the problem, approach, and results without undue effort. Core content clearly present: problem, method, findings, limitations.
  4. 4Well presented. Easy to follow, well-structured, appropriate level of detail. Target audience would get it quickly.
  5. 5Exceptionally clear. A pleasure to read. Complex ideas made accessible. Could serve as a model for how to present this type of work.

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Cite this project

@misc{goulden2026containment,
  title = {{Containment as a Governor: A third-party-verifiable containment standard for autonomous agents in safety-critical operations, worked through a theoretical AI-run air traffic control centre}},
  author = {aaron goulden},
  year = {2026},
  month = sep,
  note = {Submitted to AI Incident Response Sprint, an Apart Research Sprint},
  howpublished = {\url{https://apartresearch.com/sprints/projects/containment-as-a-governor-a-thirdpartyverifiable-containment-standard-for-autonomous-agents-in-safetycritical-operations-worked-through-a-theoretical-airun-air-traffic-control-centre-xua3}},
  url = {https://apartresearch.com/sprints/projects/containment-as-a-governor-a-thirdpartyverifiable-containment-standard-for-autonomous-agents-in-safetycritical-operations-worked-through-a-theoretical-airun-air-traffic-control-centre-xua3}
}

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