The Republic's Conscience — Edition 7: The Doctrine of Moral Closure in Artificial Systems

In this Republic’s Conscience edition of The Whitepaper, Nicolin Decker presents The Doctrine of Moral Closure in Artificial Systems, introducing The Continuity Paradox: a constitutional, legal, and diplomatic framework explaining why artificial intelligence becomes a governance risk not because it is intelligent—but because it accelerates continuity beyond human judgment.

This episode is addressed to Members of Congress, Article III courts, treaty negotiators, national-security leadership, and institutional designers confronting a foundational question increasingly obscured by technical debate:

Everyone is discussing what artificial intelligence can optimize — but almost no one is asking whether authority can survive uninterrupted execution.

🔹Core Thesis

The Doctrine argues that legitimate authority requires interruption, reversibility, and accountable human authorship. Artificial and continuity-accelerating systems erode all three—not through malfunction or abuse, but through smooth, persistent execution.

The central danger is not that machines decide. It is that decisions continue without renewed human judgment.

Where continuity becomes incontestable, legality erodes prospectively—not retrospectively.

🔹Structural Findings

Continuity vs. Authority Governance does not fail when systems break. It fails when systems cannot be stopped. Artificial systems introduce a third condition beyond tools and agents: institutional reflex—execution that produces authoritative effects without renewed judgment or identifiable authorship.

Structural Harm Without Intent Traditional legal frameworks focus on intent and discretion. Persistent systems generate legally relevant effects through architecture alone. When interruption becomes non-native, harm is structural, not accidental.

Efficiency Is Not Legitimacy History shows constitutional governance deliberately rejects pure efficiency. Delay, veto, friction, and reversibility are safeguards, not defects. Efficient systems may function flawlessly and still be unlawful if they foreclose contestation.

Moral Pre-Commitment Restraint must be embedded before capability matures. Once systems become foundational, interruption becomes politically and institutionally prohibitive. Post-hoc oversight is no longer restraint—it is damage control.

Diplomatic Illegibility Under Continuity Compression When AI-accelerated systems suppress visible markers of moral interruption, coherence becomes indistinguishable from intent. This produces a novel failure mode in international signaling: not miscommunication, but illegibility.

Prohibited Architectures Some systems must not be built—regardless of alignment success—because their structure displaces human authority. Prohibition here is moral, not technical.

🔻Closing Principle

This Doctrine is issued as constructive notice.

Once continuity is rendered incontestable, authority persists in form while its legal force dissolves in substance. Governance may continue to execute—but legitimacy no longer travels with it.

Artificial intelligence may assist governance. Continuity may enhance stability. But authority must remain interruptible.

The task before legislatures, courts, and treaty bodies is not to out-build these systems—but to out-judge them.

📄 The Doctrine of Moral Closure in Artificial Systems: The Continuity Paradox [Click Here]