Executive Summary There's a date sitting on a lot of compliance calendars right now that deserves more attention than it's getting: 2 August 2026. That's when the bulk of the EU AI Act's high-risk obligations become fully enforceable, and along with it, two things that used to live in the "nice engineering hygiene" bucket, model cards and data lineage documentation, become audit requirements with real teeth behind them. I want to be upfront about something before we go furthe

Executive Summary There's a specific kind of governance gap that doesn't show up until someone actually asks the awkward question out loud: not "does your board discuss AI," but "if your AI-powered dashboard flagged something dangerous right now, is there a written policy telling anyone what happens next?" A lot of boards, when they actually sit with that question, don't love their own answer. I covered the AI expertise gap in a companion piece already, the fact that a striki