# AI 2040 Plan A — Daniel Kokotajlo's blueprint to delay superintelligence

> The AI Futures Project's follow-up to AI 2027 — an international deal to delay superintelligence to 2040 instead of 2030.

- Org: AI Futures Project
- Date: 2026-07-09
- Category: article
- Source: https://ai-2040.com/
- Canonical page: https://ai-tldr.dev/releases/aifutures-2040-plan-a-jul9/

## In short

AI 2040 Plan A is the AI Futures Project's step-by-step scenario for how coordinated US–China action could delay superintelligence to 2040 instead of 2030. Kokotajlo, Greenblatt and colleagues follow up their AI 2027 report.

## What it is

AI 2040 Plan A is a detailed policy scenario released July 9, 2026 by Daniel Kokotajlo, Ryan Greenblatt, Thomas Larsen, Eli Lifland, Romeo Dean, and Brendan Halstead. Rather than predicting how AI will unfold, Plan A recommends what the US and China should do together to delay superintelligence to 2040 — versus the roughly 2030 arrival the group's earlier AI 2027 report projected.

## How it works

Plan A proposes mutual compute constraints between the US and China — a 'mutually assured compute destruction' scheme with published training runs, capped frontier development, and research distributed across dozens of companies. The AI Futures Project ships the scenario alongside Plans B, C, D and S so readers can compare how each governance choice cascades year by year.

## Why it matters

Kokotajlo left OpenAI over safety concerns, and his AI 2027 forecast shaped how many researchers and policymakers now talk about superintelligence timelines. Plan A gives them something concrete to argue with — a follow-up covered by the Washington Post, Semafor and Axios within a day.

## Who it's for

AI policy researchers and safety-focused engineers

## Links

- [Read the scenario](https://ai-2040.com/)
- [Announcement post](https://blog.aifutures.org/p/ai-2040-plan-a)
- [Semafor coverage](https://www.semafor.com/article/07/10/2026/a-new-plan-emerges-for-ai-apocalypse-avoidance)
- [Astral Codex Ten intro](https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/introducing-plan-a)
- [LessWrong discussion](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pFzctpJBat95SrCyC/ai-2040-plan-a)