# Delegated Verification **Domain:** Trust Infrastructure / Sovereignty / Certification **Doc Type:** Concept Node **Maturity:** Developed **Concept Hub:** [[wiki/War With Empire|War With Empire]] ## Definition **Delegated verification is reliance on an external institution or jurisdiction to determine whether another party's evidence, product, identity, process, or model is trustworthy enough to recognize.** Delegation can be efficient and legitimate; it becomes a sovereignty problem when the delegating parties cannot reproduce, contest, replace, or exit the verification layer. ## War With Empire Context [[articles/war with empire/The True Enemy of Both China and the United States|The True Enemy of Both China and the United States]] argues that the alternative to direct bilateral verification is not automatically safety. It may be a third-party authorization layer whose standards and incentives neither endpoint controls. ## Constitutional Requirement Delegated verification should expose scope, evidence, conflicts, appeal, reproducibility, and alternative pathways. [[wiki/Bounded Examination|Bounded Examination]] limits what an attestation may claim; [[wiki/Exit Cost|Exit Cost]] measures whether the delegation remains optional in practice. ## Key Insight **Trust delegated for convenience can become authority delegated by default.** ## See Also [[wiki/Certification State|Certification State]], [[wiki/Credential Interoperability|Credential Interoperability]], [[wiki/Bilateral Autonomy|Bilateral Autonomy]], [[wiki/Gatekeeping Without Ownership|Gatekeeping Without Ownership]]