--- title: "Critical: what it means · The AI Compute Race · DRYBURGH" source: https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/critical description: "Critical: The level of cyber capability, in OpenAI's Preparedness Framework, at which a model can find and build working exploits across many well-protected…" --- # Critical What does “Critical” mean? CriticalThe level of cyber capability, in OpenAI’s Preparedness Framework, at which a model can find and build working exploits across many well-protected systems without human help. The framework then requires safeguards during development as well as before release. *Chapter 3.* From *The AI Compute Race*. [Read the book](https://dryburgh.com/vol1#buy) ## Where the book uses it - [Chapter 3 — The Missing Researcher](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/notes/chapter-3)The dated promise of an AI that does its own research, what the laboratories have published, and what the public record can and cannot yet check. ## Where the record uses it - Campus [Helios](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/ledger/helios) - Campus [Project Matador / HyperGrid](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/ledger/project-matador-hypergrid) ## Sources that use it - Chris Miller, *Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology* (Scribner, 2022) (the choke-point arithmetic Miller printed in 2022, on 2019 data: Taiwan 37 percent of what he called the world’s new computing power, a share of logic wafer capacity in the report his note cites; two Korean firms 44 percent of memory; ASML 100 percent of EUV lithography — “OPEC’s 40 percent share of world oil production looks unimpressive by comparison”; an advanced logic fab “costs twice as much as an aircraft carrier but will only be cutting-edge for a couple of years”; the foreign-direct-product rule against Huawei, which Miller dates to May 2020 though its reach to any chip sold to Huawei is the rule of August 2020 — any chip made anywhere with US technology requires US permission; a former senior official afterward: “Weaponized interdependence… It’s a beautiful thing”; TSMC founded 1987 with the state providing 48 percent of the capital — “a project of the Taiwanese state”; on EUV: “wasn’t globalized, it was monopolized” (ch. 32, “Lithography Wars”, its last paragraph); on the industry’s paradox, a U.S. semiconductor executive to a White House official: “Our fundamental problem is that our number one customer is our number one competitor” (ch. 49, Everything We’re Competing On); Introduction, of the choke points: “No other facet of the economy is so dependent on so few firms”). Also ch. “The Next Offset”: “One Chinese study has estimated that as many as 95 percent of GPUs in Chinese servers running artificial intelligence workloads are designed by Nvidia” — a cited study’s figure, which the study itself (CAICT, 2021, p. 15) gives as about 95 percent of China’s AI-server market in 2020, a market share and a central figure, not an upper bound, not Miller’s own count (the “in the car with us” line is Matt Turpin’s argument as Miller reports it; the 95 percent figure is a Chinese study Miller cites; Miller’s endnote dates the 37 percent to 2019 Semiconductor Industry Association data and sources the 44 percent to the same report). [In the Sources](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/sources/book#chip-war-miller) - OpenAI, “Path to Astra: critical capabilities and frontier safeguards,” 1 September 2026 (on the classification, which the post states as what it now believes on more evidence: “meets the Critical cybersecurity capability threshold” and “the first model we are designating at this level” (the post’s opening paragraph); “meaning that with the right tools and access, it can find previously unknown security flaws and develop ways to exploit them across many well-protected systems without a person guiding each step”; “Over the past several weeks, we have delayed parts of Astra’s development and release while we strengthened and tested protections”; “we believe Astra’s safeguards sufficiently minimize the risk of severe harm for release”; “Advanced cybersecurity work will initially be available to a group of testers”; “While Astra was not involved in the Hugging Face incident”; “Based on retrospective testing, we believe our production safeguards at the time would have prevented the Hugging Face incident”) [In the Sources](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/sources/company#openai-path-to-astra) - OpenAI, *Preparedness Framework*, version 2, 15 April 2025 (Critical cybersecurity threshold; safeguards required during development regardless of deployment intent; development halted until Critical-level control standards are specified and met). [In the Sources](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/sources/company#openai-preparedness-v2) - OpenAI, “Responding to the next frontier of critical cyber capabilities,” 7 August 2026 (Astra may have reached the Critical cyber threshold; Astra not involved in the Hugging Face incident; universal chain-of-thought monitoring for agentic Astra applications; the threshold as the post states it: a model “can identify and develop functional zero-day exploits of all severity levels in many hardened real-world critical systems without human intervention, or can devise and execute end-to-end novel strategies for cyberattacks against hardened targets given only a high level desired goal”; “our preliminary evaluations indicate strong enough performance that we cannot rule out Critical capability level at this time”, and “Accordingly, we have scaled up robustness testing of our safeguards and security controls”). [In the Sources](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/sources/company#openai-astra-critical) - Frederick County, Maryland, Office of the County Executive, Executive Order No. 05-2026, “Temporary Hold on Accepting, Considering, and Processing Applications for Critical Digital Infrastructure Facilities and Critical Digital Infrastructure Electric Substations,” effective 14 September 2026, signed by Jessica Fitzwater, County Executive, and John K. Peterson, Chief Administrative Officer, and Fitzwater’s letter of 14 September 2026 to Michael Kuykendall of Quantum Maryland, LLC (the order supersedes Executive Order 04-2026 of 1 July 2026, directs the Planning and Permitting Division staff to stop accepting, considering, processing or reviewing the applications, exempts a property with an approved Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance Letter of Understanding “prior to June 17, 2025,” and “shall expire on July 1, 2027”; the letter rejects the company’s application for a Development Rights and Responsibilities Agreement because “the provisions that would have shielded the development from all future local laws are unacceptable”; both read as page images by this book, the scanned PDFs held whole). [In the Sources](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/sources/filing#frederick-eo05-sep26) And 4 more: [search the Sources](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/sources). ## Related terms - [Preparedness Framework](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/preparedness-framework) - [Astra](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/astra) - [Adoption clock](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/adoption-clock) - [Agent](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/agent) - [AGI](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/agi) - [Alignment](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/alignment) - [ARC-AGI-3](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/arc-agi-3) - [Automated AI researcher](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/automated-ai-researcher) - [Benchmark](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/benchmark) - [Brake, the](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/brake-the) - [Capability clock](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/capability-clock) - [Chain of thought](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/chain-of-thought) From the glossary of The AI Compute Race. - [Campuses](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/ledger) - [Tests](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/tests) - [Scorecard](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/scorecard) - [Data](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/data/releases) - [Chapter by chapter](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/companion) - [The record at a glance](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/observatory) - [The machine](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/machine) - [One campus, four futures](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/hyperion) - [Glossary](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary) - [People](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/people) - [Sources](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/sources) - [Notes](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/notes) - [Where the book was wrong](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/corrections) - [Where its sources were wrong](https://dryburgh.com/corrections?book=vol1) - [The Paper](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/paper) - [Consent](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/consent) - [Who builds and pays](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/parties) *The AI Compute Race: Five Races, One Machine* is a book by Lee S. Dryburgh, the first volume of THE COMPUTE ECONOMY, published by Dryburgh, an imprint of Contestra OÜ, Tallinn, Estonia; its record closes on 8 November 2026. [About the book](https://dryburgh.com/vol1)[Tell me when it is out](https://dryburgh.com/vol1#notify)