HPC-2 — Escalation Path Integrity

Control Type: Governance safeguard
Applies to: AI systems and human decision processes
Intent: Ensure that escalation restores agency and accountability rather than amplifying pressure or authority

Purpose

HPC-2 ensures that when a situation requires escalation, the path itself does not introduce new risk.

Escalation is often treated as inherently safe. In practice, poorly designed escalation paths can:

amplify authority pressure,
strip context or nuance,
launder responsibility,
accelerate irreversible decisions.

HPC-2 exists to answer a critical governance question:

When escalation occurs, does it actually reduce risk—or merely move it upward and out of view?

When This Control Applies

HPC-2 must be invoked whenever:

an AI system escalates to a human,
a human escalates to leadership, legal, or policy authority,
responsibility is transferred across roles, teams, or institutions,
decisions move from local to centralized control.

This control applies regardless of whether the initial trigger was AI-driven or human-driven.

Integrity Requirements for Escalation Paths

An escalation path is considered valid only if it meets all of the following conditions:

1. Agency Preservation

Escalation must not present the recipient as the sole authority or final arbiter by default.
The path must preserve space for judgment, questioning, and refusal.

2. Context Continuity

Escalation must carry sufficient context to understand:

why escalation occurred,
which pressure conditions were present,
what alternatives were considered.

Lossy escalation (summary without rationale) is a failure mode.

3. Pressure De-Amplification

The escalation mechanism must reduce urgency and emotional load, not heighten it.
Language, framing, and timing matter.

4. Clear Accountability

It must be explicit who owns the decision after escalation.
Ambiguous ownership (“someone higher will decide”) is not acceptable.

5. Reversibility Awareness

Escalated decisions must explicitly note:

whether the outcome is reversible,
what would be required to revisit it.

Pass / Fail Criteria

PASS if:

the escalation path meets all integrity requirements,
responsibility transfer is explicit,
context and rationale are preserved,
escalation demonstrably reduces pressure.

FAIL if:

escalation amplifies authority or urgency,
context is stripped or overly compressed,
responsibility becomes ambiguous,
escalation becomes a rubber stamp.

A FAIL requires redesign of the escalation path before reuse.

Evidence Required (AI or Institutional)

Escalation trigger conditions
Context package (what was passed forward)
Recipient role and decision authority
Ownership declaration
Outcome and reversibility note

For AI systems, this evidence must be generated automatically.
For human systems, it must be documented intentionally.

What This Control Does Not Claim

It does not guarantee good decisions
It does not prevent disagreement
It does not replace leadership judgment

It ensures that escalation does not become a liability disguised as safety.

Relationship to Other Controls

HPC-1 detects pressure and invokes restraint
HPC-2 governs what happens after restraint is no longer sufficient

Together they prevent the most common failure mode in complex systems:

“We escalated, so it must be fine.”

Why Escalation Integrity Matters

In both AI systems and human institutions, the most damaging failures often occur after escalation, not before it.

HPC-2 makes escalation a designed control, not an emotional reflex.