Who gets to decide which AI safety findings we see?

When an AI company says its product is safe, an outside assessment can help us decide how much confidence to place in that claim. But the assessment is only part of the story. We also need to understand who sets the evaluator's scope, who sees the findings and who can delay their release. The Associated Press reports that officials at the US government's AI evaluation center, CAISSI, were asked to report informally to a White House office. Its account cites two unnamed former officials and raises concerns about leadership and publication of evaluation findings. The White House did not answer AP's specific questions about the center. That is significant reporting, not a formal reorganization order we have independently inspected. The public record also requires care. NIST still hosts a September 17 assessment of GLM-5.3 and October 16 incident-response guidance. The latter was a joint voluntary publication with NSA and CISA. Those records do not resolve the concern about independence, but they prevent us from describing every kind of public research as having stopped. Nor do old published records establish what is currently being held back. There is a good-faith case that closer executive attention could bring resources and influence. The test is whether evaluators retain the ability to report inconvenient results—not simply how near they sit to political power. Sensitive technical details can sometimes require protection; that does not remove the need to explain evaluation scope, publication rules and material limitations. Our conclusion is a question institutions can answer concretely: what can the public expect to learn, on what timetable, and who is authorized to change that expectation? Independence becomes more credible when those arrangements can be examined rather than merely asserted.