Who determines equivalence?
Access that depends on meeting a standard needs someone to decide who meets it. Whoever decides controls the network.
SIRDA editorial hypothesis
Equivalence determinations can follow the same separation as other decisions: independent evaluators assess the evidence, a multinational panel decides, an appeal follows, and participating regimes recognize one another's certifications on that basis. Each national regime keeps its own regulators. This hypothesis fails if one state or bloc controls the determination in practice, if any party can certify itself, or if the developers who control the network decide who may join it.
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The argument
Each obvious answer fails. If Washington alone decides whether Chinese oversight is equivalent, the network becomes an instrument of American policy. If Beijing certifies itself, verification means nothing. If the leading labs decide, the cartel problem returns.
International banking offers a partial model. Under Basel home-host principles, supervisors in a host country assess whether a foreign bank's home supervision is adequate, and they may restrict its operations where it falls short. National legal responsibility stays with each supervisor. The weakness is that the host's judgment is unilateral. SIRDA's question is whether a reciprocal procedure can replace unilateral judgment without handing the decision to a body that could be captured.
This question also carries the China problem. A network that requires China to adopt American institutions will face a rival network instead. A network that requires only demonstrated equivalence against a shared threshold, verified through a procedure both sides can contest, offers a bargain: verification as the price of participation, and access to chips and compute as its benefit.
How to test it
Take two national regimes with different legal systems and a shared threshold. Have each evaluate the other's certification of the same system. Introduce a politically motivated denial and a self-certification backed by weak evidence. Record whether the procedure detects both, who can overturn each, and how long a legitimate applicant waits.
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