Red Team Challenge / Hardware shipments / Patent pending · USPTO provisional
AI² · Containment Systems

Hardware enforces.
Software begs.

Tartarus™ is a physical containment layer for generative computing. This assessment scores whether your AI infrastructure can be stopped by a wire — not by a policy the system itself can override.

USPTO Provisional · Patent Pending Twelve-patent portfolio
01 · The framework

What Tartarus is

Tartarus™ treats authorization as a physical constraint, not a policy declaration. In myth, Tartarus is the sealed vault beneath the world where the most dangerous forces are held behind walls of bronze. The engineering principle is identical.

The layer that stops a generative system must be electrically and physically independent of the system it contains. If the only thing between an untrusted model and the outside world is software the model can influence, you do not have containment — you have a request.

Tartarus™ is the physical enclosure and containment layer in the AI² hardware-governance stack: a sealed, sensed chassis with independent power domains, a unidirectional inhibit substrate, and typed egress channels that commit atomically under hardware veto. It is our twelfth USPTO provisional patent, completing a containment trilogy with the quaternary inhibition lattice and deterministic snapshot-addressable context compilation.

The assessment on this page scores your current infrastructure against that framework — before you ever touch our hardware. It runs entirely in your browser and tells you where your containment gap is widest.

The outermost stop

Each layer restrains the one inside it. Tartarus™ is the physical envelope — the only layer that can halt the assembly without the cooperation of anything it contains.

02 · The problem

Why engage — the Authorization Gap™

The moment that matters is the moment of failure. Most systems cannot reconstruct their own state at that moment, cannot prove what was authorized, and cannot be halted without the cooperation of the thing that just failed. That distance — between what a system is permitted to do and what it can actually be stopped from doing — is the Authorization Gap™.

// EXPOSURE

Logical controls, physical bypass

RBAC, guardrails, and policy layers all live inside the blast radius. A privileged process on the compute node can, on most deployments, disable the very controls meant to restrain it.

// SIDE CHANNELS

Leakage you never tested

Power, electromagnetic, timing, thermal, and acoustic emanations carry information across any air gap. Few AI deployments have ever been measured for it.

// OUTPUT

A weighted containment-gap score

Eight domains, forty controls, scored against the Tartarus framework — with per-finding remediation and a phased roadmap you can act on Monday.

// POSTURE

Prove containment, don't assert it

Red-team reviews, audits, and AI-system underwriting increasingly ask for evidence of physical containment. This assessment is where that evidence starts.

03 · Audience

Who it's for

If an unauthorized external effect from your AI system carries real-world cost, this assessment is calibrated for you.

Operators of high-value AI workloads

Teams running agentic or high-capability generative systems where a single unauthorized action, transaction, or exfiltration is materially expensive.

Data-center, colocation & edge

Facilities hosting untrusted or third-party models who must reason about physical, power-domain, and interface isolation — not just network security.

Defense, finance & critical infrastructure

Regulated and high-assurance environments that are required to demonstrate containment rather than assert it in a policy document.

Teams facing review

Anyone preparing for red-team engagement, security audit, or insurance underwriting of an AI system, who needs a defensible starting posture.

04 · The company

Who is AI²

AI² — Asymmetric Intelligence & Innovation. We build the layer that sits beneath the model: hardware that enforces what software can only request. Our doctrine comes from four decades of fault-tolerant control systems, where the layer that protects is always separated from the layer that operates.

40+
Years fault-tolerant control
38+
International patents
12
USPTO provisionals filed
6
Continents deployed

Founded by David P. Reichwein — four decades in nuclear instrumentation, aerospace, and heavy industrial control — with Dr. Khaliah Parker-Reichwein as COO. Based in Nashville, Tennessee. Tartarus™ is one component of a coherent hardware-governance stack:

Quadzistor™
Quaternary inhibition latticeFour-state hardware algebra with hierarchical inhibition — the logic substrate of restraint.
PCR™
Permission Control RuntimeDeterministic pause → contextualize → resume mediation of privileged action.
ChronaGate™
Deterministic I/O gatingDual-gate input and output wrapping an untrusted intelligence with snapshot-addressable context.
Tartarus™
Physical containment enclosureThe sealed, sensed, independently powered vessel that holds the entire assembly.
05 · The assessment

How the assessment works

A structured intake across eight containment domains. The scoring engine runs on your machine — nothing is transmitted until you decide to send it.

Complete the intake

Answer the eight-domain questionnaire below — physical enclosure, power, interfaces, side channels, authorization, supply chain, and incident response.

Scored live, in your browser

The gauge updates as you answer. Every unanswered or unconfirmed control is counted at worst case — you start fully exposed and buy the gap down with each verified control.

Receive your containment gap

A weighted gap score, ranked findings with specific remediation, and a phased roadmap from immediate fixes to full Tartarus deployment.

Engage AI² (optional)

Escalate to a certified review: validated findings, a hardware remediation roadmap, and a working session with the AI² team.

Domains measured
06 · Engagement

Pricing

Start free. Escalate when the gap is real.

Instant Self-Assessment
Free
  • Full eight-domain intake
  • Live weighted containment-gap score
  • Ranked findings with remediation
  • Phased roadmap, computed in-browser
  • Results never leave your machine unless you send them
Run it now
Tartarus Containment Engagement
$2,500 / engagement
  • Everything in the self-assessment
  • Certified review of findings by AI²
  • Validated, evidence-backed gap analysis
  • Hardware remediation roadmap
  • Live working session with the AI² team
Book the engagement

Scheduled and invoiced after a short scoping call.

07 · Run it

Tartarus containment assessment

Answer what you can. Every scored item left blank is counted at worst case, so a partial intake gives you a deliberately conservative floor.

A Client & system context