Keep humanity off the cliff.
Operation SAVE is led by physicians and engineers. We are preparing for the worst harm AI could cause: defensive AI, hardened places to treat people, and the team to run both.
Join the teamThe physiological cliff
One of my attendings drew this for me during a shift, right after we pulled a crashing patient back. He called it the physiological cliff.
When you are born, you are hopefully far from the edge. As you get sicker, whether that is end-stage cancer or any critical illness, you move closer to it. In emergency medicine, our job is to stop the fall. Put simply, we help people not die.
Operation SAVE is about stopping that fall when the cause is AI.
Preparation, not fear
I keep a close eye on this technology, and I talk regularly with people in security who watch it every day. What I see points one way: we need to get ready, and not enough people are working on it.
We have a quiet room for families while we run a code on someone they love. It is terrible, and it is also how we do our job. You prepare for the worst thing before it walks through the door.
AI safeguards lower the odds. Emergency medicine plans for the day the odds lose.
The safeguards AI companies build matter. But software cannot help someone keep breathing through a toxic exposure, a burn, or a pathogen far worse than anything we have seen. That takes people, places, and tools built for the worst day.
The blueprint
Doctors and engineers make the calls
The most important part of this is the team. Decisions belong with physicians and engineers, not politicians or tech CEOs. Elected officials answer to elections. Companies answer to revenue. We need emergency medicine, critical care, surgery, and disaster medicine working side by side with AI, security, and infrastructure engineers, in roles that change as the threat changes.
Defensive AI that keeps pace with the frontier
We cannot fight superintelligence with people alone. We build defensive AI as capable as the most advanced models, each system focused on one catastrophic outcome: spotting it early, warning the people who need to know, and helping design the response. Then we pair those systems with trained people who can act on what they find.
Places built to keep people breathing
When the worst happens, people need somewhere to go. We plan facilities with negative-pressure rooms, HEPA filtration, and reinforced concrete construction, staffed and stocked to keep treating patients when everything else fails.
Where this stands
Day one. No funding, no team, and no facilities yet. This page is how we start finding the people who can build it.
Operation SAVE was started by Grant Denmark, DO, an emergency medicine resident with a background in software and health. This is not about me. It is about giving people a real chance.
Help build it
We are looking for:
- Emergency, critical care, surgery, and disaster medicine physicians
- AI and machine learning engineers
- Security researchers
- Engineers who design and build hardened facilities
- Funders who want to back preparedness