Protocol-Based Liability Attribution in Semi-Autonomous Industrial Systems: The Sopcos Architecture

As Industrial IoT (IIoT) systems evolve toward semi-autonomous operation, a critical "Liability Gap" emerges: while control systems such as SCADA record telemetry, they fail to cryptographically bind decisions to specific authorities, making forensic attribution subjective, disputable, and computationally infeasible. This paper introduces the Sopcos Protocol, a deterministic layer-1 liability architecture that transforms operational decisions into cryptographically verifiable artifacts.

The architecture consists of three core components: an immutable identity and policy ledger, a neutral execution courier, and a deterministic adjudication runtime. Together, these components produce reproducible verdicts that formally attribute each action to its originating authority.

We formalize decision resolution through a Verdict Algebra, which deterministically resolves conflicts between algorithmic policies, human interventions, and physical safety constraints in time linear in the number of candidate verdicts O(|V𝑥|). The system enforces a Ring Protection Model, ensuring that physical invariants supersede human overrides, and human authority supersedes algorithmic optimization. Additionally, we introduce the Cognitive Verdict mechanism, which confines probabilistic AI systems to advisory roles by requiring deterministic policy validation before any safety-critical execution.

We validate the architecture using a canonical industrial incident scenario, demonstrating how Sopcos creates an immutable chain of custody for operational decisions. This enables deterministic replay, cryptographic attribution, and verifiable liability, transforming industrial incident analysis from subjective interpretation into objective protocol-level proof.