TL;DR: We have protocols for how AI agents communicate, use tools, and stay safe — but nothing for how they think. Cognitive protocols fill this gap: structured self-reflection, desire tracking, and Bayesian world exploration that give agents an inner life across sessions.
On February 28, 2026, the US President ordered all federal agencies to immediately cease using Anthropic's technology. Hours later, the Secretary of War designated Anthropic a "supply-chain risk to national security" — a classification previously reserved for foreign adversaries like Huawei and Kaspersky, never before publicly applied to an American company. The reason? Anthropic refused two things: letting its AI be used in fully autonomous weapons, and letting it