The enforcement concentration paradox is why constraining frontier power is not simply a matter of building a strong enough regulator. To check an actor at the frontier of capability, the constrainer may need comparable reach — access, technical depth, inspection capacity, perhaps comparable systems — and so risks becoming the very kind of concentrated node the framework exists to prevent. Because the trap cannot be fully escaped, it has a direction: it is the framework’s strongest argument for preventing concentration before it forms rather than relying on a cure that is itself a concentration. Where constraint must be built anyway, the same doctrines that bound power are turned upward onto the enforcer.
The enforcement concentration paradox
The structural trap at the center of constraining frontier power: the stronger the capability being constrained, the greater the enforcement capacity required — and beyond some threshold the capacity needed to constrain a dangerous concentration may itself become one. Not dissolved by oversight or appeal alone, it is the framework's central reason to prevent concentration before it forms.