The Gap
Nobody owns this problem yet.
Guidance for AI in operational technology is arriving fast. None of it yet covers embodied systems — and the deployments are already in production.
In December 2025, CISA, the NSA, the FBI and seven international partners published joint principles for integrating AI into operational technology. Two more documents followed by May 2026, including the first Five Eyes guidance on agentic AI. NIST opened its AI Agent Standards Initiative in February 2026.
None of it yet covers embodied systems. Not robots. Not autonomous vehicles. Not physical AI.
Meanwhile the deployments are already in production. Automotive plants are running hundreds of robots and autonomous material handlers coordinated by AI logistics. Water utilities are adding predictive control. Warehouses are running fleets of autonomous mobile robots alongside people, without cages.
The guidance is voluntary today. Procurement requirements, insurance questionnaires, and OEM supplier terms will not stay voluntary for long.
What we actually do about it
OUR APPROACH
We start with an inventory
Most operators discover they have more autonomous decision-making in the environment than anyone has documented — including AI features that arrived inside equipment they already owned.
We test the models the way an attacker would
A vision system that gates quality is a control system. A navigation stack is a control system. Both can be fooled, and neither is covered by your network monitoring.
We draw the boundaries
Every agent gets its own identity, the minimum reachability it needs, an approval gate on anything consequential, and a path back to a known safe state.
We write it down in a form that survives
An audit, an OEM security review, or a regulator asking what happened — the documentation holds up in all three.
Who this is for
Tier-1 and tier-2 manufacturers facing security requirements flowing down from OEM customers
Water and wastewater utilities adding automation ahead of federal and state reporting rules
Logistics and distribution operators running autonomous material handling at scale
Robotics and industrial equipment vendors who need a defensible security story for their own buyers