# Who's Writing the Rules for AI Agents?

*Inside the team blocs, geopolitics, and collaboration networks shaping the future of AI agent standards.*

*Analysis based on IETF Datatracker data collected through March 2026. Counts and statistics reflect this snapshot.*

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Thirteen people from one company co-author 22 Internet-Drafts at 94% internal cohesion. Their work covers agent networking, identity management, communication protocols, and network troubleshooting. Together, they represent the single most coordinated standards-writing campaign in the IETF's AI agent space.

They all work at Huawei.

This is the story of who is writing the rules for AI agents, what their collaboration networks reveal, and why the geography of authorship matters more than most people realize.

## The Numbers Behind the Names

Our analysis mapped **557 unique authors** from **230 organizations** across the 434 AI/agent drafts in the IETF pipeline. But those topline numbers mask extreme concentration.

| Organization | Authors | Drafts |
|-------------|--------:|-------:|
| Huawei | 53 | 69 |
| China Mobile | 24 | 35 |
| Cisco | 24 | 26 |
| Independent | 19 | 25 |
| China Telecom | 24 | 24 |
| China Unicom | 22 | 21 |
| Tsinghua University | 13 | 16 |
| ZTE Corporation | 12 | 12 |
| Five9 | 1 | 10 |
| Ericsson | 4 | 9 |

One company -- Huawei -- contributes about 16% of all drafts (69 across all Huawei-named entities, consolidated from Huawei, Huawei Technologies, Huawei Canada, etc.). The top six Chinese-linked organizations together contribute over 160 authors. This is not a general pattern across the IETF; it is specific to the AI agent space, and it tells a story about who considers these standards strategically important.

## The Huawei Drafting Machine

The Huawei team bloc is worth examining in detail because it illustrates a pattern -- organized, coordinated standards campaigns -- that is characteristic of how some institutions approach the IETF.

The 13-person core team includes:

| Author | Drafts | Role in Team |
|--------|-------:|-------------|
| Bing Liu | 23 | Top contributor, appears on most team drafts |
| Zhenbin Li | 21 | Core, agent networking frameworks |
| Nan Geng | 20 | Core, near-total overlap with Liu |
| Qiangzhou Gao | 20 | Core, cross-device communication |
| Xiaotong Shang | 19 | Core, network measurement and troubleshooting |
| Jianwei Mao | 14 | Communication protocol gap analysis |
| Guanming Zeng | 13 | MCP and NETCONF for agents |

The remaining six members contribute 2-5 drafts each. The team's **94% cohesion** means that nearly every possible pair of members shares the vast majority of their drafts. This is not casual co-authorship; it is a systematic drafting operation.

Their 22 drafts cover a specific territory: agent networking frameworks for enterprise and broadband networks, agent identity management, cross-device communication, MCP integration for network troubleshooting, and agent gateway requirements. The focus is heavily on **autonomous network operations** and **A2A protocols** -- the infrastructure layer of the agent ecosystem.

Two deeper metrics reveal the nature of this operation:

**Volume over iteration.** Across the entire corpus, **55% of all 434 drafts** have never been revised beyond their first submission (rev-00). But the rate varies dramatically by organization. Of Huawei's drafts, **65% are at rev-00**. Compare that to Ericsson (11%), Siemens (0%), Nokia (20%), or Boeing (0%). The most serious iterators -- Boeing (avg 28.2 revisions per draft), Siemens (17.2), Sandelman Software (14.3) -- submit far fewer drafts but iterate relentlessly. Western companies submit fewer drafts but revise heavily -- incorporating feedback, advancing toward maturity. Huawei's pattern is the opposite: submit at volume, iterate rarely. Submitting a draft is cheap. Iterating it signals genuine investment.

**Campaign timing.** Of Huawei's drafts, **43 were submitted in the four weeks before IETF 121 Dublin** -- 62% of the company's entire output, packed into a single pre-meeting window. For context, the entire corpus had 107 drafts in that period. Huawei alone accounted for **40% of all pre-IETF 121 submissions**. This is not organic growth. It is a coordinated submission campaign timed for maximum standards-body impact.

Beyond the main team, the company has additional smaller blocs. No other organization comes close to this level of coordinated output.

## The Chinese Institutional Ecosystem

Huawei does not operate in isolation. The Chinese organizations in this space form a densely interconnected collaboration network.

| Org A | Org B | Shared Drafts |
|-------|-------|-----:|
| China Unicom | Huawei | 6 |
| Tsinghua University | Zhongguancun Laboratory | 5 |
| China Mobile | ZTE Corporation | 4 |
| China Mobile | Huawei | 4 |
| BUPT | Tsinghua University | 3 |
| China Telecom | Huawei | 3 |
| BUPT | China Telecom | 3 |
| CAICT | Huawei | 3 |

The structure has three tiers:

**Tier 1: Telecom operators** -- China Mobile (24 authors, 35 drafts), China Telecom (24 authors, 24 drafts), China Unicom (22 authors, 21 drafts). These organizations bring domain expertise in network operations and 6G requirements. Their drafts focus heavily on use cases: agents for 6G networks, agent-based network management, traffic optimization.

**Tier 2: Equipment vendor** -- Huawei (53 authors, 66 drafts), ZTE Corporation (12 authors, 12 drafts). Huawei's dominance here is striking; ZTE's contribution is modest by comparison. These drafts focus on architecture and protocols -- the building blocks rather than the use cases.

**Tier 3: Research institutions** -- Tsinghua University (13 authors, 16 drafts), BUPT (14 authors, 7 drafts), Zhongguancun Laboratory (4 authors, 6 drafts), CAICT (8 authors, 6 drafts). These institutions bridge the gap between industry and academia, often co-authoring with both telecom operators and Huawei.

The Zhongguancun Laboratory team (4 members, 5 shared drafts, 94% cohesion) is led by Yong Cui of Tsinghua University, one of the most prolific individual authors with 8 drafts spanning agent discovery, network management benchmarking, and LLM-assisted operations. His work includes [draft-cui-nmrg-llm-benchmark](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-cui-nmrg-llm-benchmark/) (score 4.3) -- one of the highest-rated drafts in the corpus.

The China Telecom team (6 members from China Telecom, BUPT, and Tsinghua) focuses on 6G agent use cases and IoA task protocols. Their drafts are more forward-looking than Huawei's -- less about current network operations, more about where agents fit in next-generation infrastructure.

## Where Is the West?

The absence is as telling as the presence.

**Google**: 5 authors, 9 drafts -- a notable increase, but still thin relative to the company's agent platform presence (Gemini agents, A2A protocol).

**Microsoft**: Minimal presence.

**Apple**: Two authors, two drafts -- both about mail automation ([draft-ietf-mailmaint-pacc](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-mailmaint-pacc/), [draft-eggert-mailmaint-uaautoconf](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-eggert-mailmaint-uaautoconf/)). Not about AI agents per se.

**Amazon**: 6 authors, 6 drafts -- primarily post-quantum cryptography work (ML-KEM hybrid key exchange), not agent-specific.

**Cisco**: The most active Western tech company with 24 authors across 26 drafts, but spread thinly. Three separate Cisco blocs cover different areas: Cullen Fluffy Jennings and Suhas Nandakumar work on A2A transport and agent identity; another team (Muscariello, Papalini, Sardara, Betts) works on AGNTCY messaging; a third (Farinacci, Rodriguez-Natal, Maino) works on LISP-based networking. No single coordinated campaign.

**Ericsson**: 4 authors, 9 drafts -- focused on EDHOC lightweight authentication, a mature protocol effort led by Goran Selander. High quality (scores 3.2-4.1) but narrow scope.

The pattern is clear: Western companies are either absent from AI agent standardization or participating in adjacent security/crypto work rather than the core agent protocol space. The reasons likely include strategic focus on proprietary agent ecosystems (Google's Gemini, Apple's Siri agents), less tradition of IETF engagement in the agent/AI space, and the assumption that de facto standards (MCP, A2A) will matter more than de jure IETF ones.

This bet may prove wrong. IETF standards have a way of becoming the infrastructure that everyone must eventually support.

## The Team Bloc Landscape

Beyond Huawei, our co-authorship analysis detected **18 team blocs** covering a significant fraction of the 557 authors. Each bloc is a group where members share at least 70% pairwise draft overlap and 3+ shared drafts.

The most notable non-Chinese blocs:

**Ericsson team** (5 members, 6 drafts, 100% cohesion) -- Goran Selander and colleagues lead this European effort focused on EDHOC authentication and lightweight key exchange for constrained devices. They collaborate with Inria (France) and the University of Murcia (Spain). Their work ([draft-spm-lake-pqsuites](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-spm-lake-pqsuites/), score 4.1) represents some of the most mature protocol work in the corpus.

**Five9/Bitwave team** (2 members, 6 drafts, 100% cohesion) -- Jonathan Rosenberg (Five9) and Pat White (Bitwave) are the most prolific Western contributors to core agent protocols. Their drafts span the full stack: CHEQ for human confirmation of agent decisions ([draft-rosenberg-aiproto-cheq](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-rosenberg-aiproto-cheq/), score 3.9), N-ACT for agent-to-tool communication, and an OAuth extension for agent authentication. Rosenberg is also the strongest cross-team bridge, sharing 3 drafts with Cisco's Cullen Fluffy Jennings -- the single strongest cross-bloc connection we found.

**ISI, R.C. ATHENA team** (4 members, 4 drafts, 100% cohesion) -- A Greek research institute producing post-quantum authentication work for EDHOC. All four members (Haleplidis, Fraile, Fournaris, Koulamas) co-author every draft. Their [draft-lake-pocero-authkem-ikr-edhoc](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-lake-pocero-authkem-ikr-edhoc/) scored 4.2.

**JPMorgan/multi-org team** (4 members from JPMorgan, Oracle, Telefonica, Aryaka; 2 drafts, 100% cohesion) -- The most cross-organizational Western bloc. Their work on transitive attestation ([draft-mw-wimse-transitive-attestation](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-mw-wimse-transitive-attestation/), score 4.3) and actor chains ([draft-mw-spice-actor-chain](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-mw-spice-actor-chain/), score 4.1) addresses the safety and accountability space. Notably, these are among the highest-scored drafts in the corpus.

## The Cross-Pollination Problem

Once you account for team blocs, the cross-team collaboration picture is sparse. The top cross-bloc connection -- Jonathan Rosenberg bridging Five9/Bitwave and Cisco -- involves just 3 shared drafts. Most cross-team pairs share only 1.

Our network centrality analysis reveals who bridges these gaps. Of 557 authors, only **115 (23%)** co-author with people from both Chinese and Western organizations. The top bridge-builders are not from the organizations you might expect:

| Author | Organization | BC Score | CN Neighbors | Western Neighbors |
|--------|-------------|--------:|---:|---:|
| Luis M. Contreras | Telefonica | 0.035 | 11 | 3 |
| Qin Wu | Huawei | 0.035 | 12 | 11 |
| Muhammad Awais Jadoon | InterDigital | 0.023 | 9 | 4 |
| Diego Lopez | Telefonica | 0.013 | 6 | 9 |
| Giuseppe Fioccola | Huawei | 0.009 | 2 | 8 |

The structural glue holding the two blocs together is **European telecoms** -- Telefonica, InterDigital, Deutsche Telekom. Not US Big Tech. Not any formal cross-standards body. A handful of European companies, through their authors' co-authorship ties, provide the only significant cross-divide connectivity. Qin Wu (Huawei) is the most balanced individual bridge, with nearly equal Chinese and Western co-author networks. But these bridges are thin: remove any two or three of these people, and the network fragments further.

The sparseness of these bridges becomes even more concerning when you look at what the two blocs are building *on*. Our RFC cross-reference analysis (detailed in Post 3) reveals that the Chinese and Western blocs cite fundamentally different technology stacks. The Chinese agent ecosystem is being built on **network management protocols** -- YANG (RFC 7950), NETCONF (RFC 6241), and autonomic networking (RFC 7575). The Western ecosystem is being built on **IoT security and web infrastructure** -- COSE (RFC 9052), CBOR (RFC 8949), CoAP (RFC 7252), HTTP Semantics (RFC 9110), and EDHOC (RFC 9528). The only shared foundation is **OAuth 2.0** -- which explains why the OAuth-for-agents space has 14 competing proposals. It is the one piece of common ground, and everyone is fighting over it.

This means the cross-pollination problem is deeper than "different teams working separately." The two blocs are building on incompatible infrastructure. Even if they agreed on an agent communication pattern, the underlying plumbing diverges.

The IETF's consensus process works best when different implementation perspectives collide and reconcile. In the AI agent space, those collisions are rare. The Chinese institutional ecosystem collaborates internally but has limited connections to Western contributors. The European cryptographic teams (Ericsson, RISE, ATHENA) work on authentication foundations but do not connect to the agent protocol teams. The American startups (Five9, Bitwave) and enterprise companies (Cisco) work on adjacent problems without shared architectural framing.

The one exception is Fraunhofer SIT's Henk Birkholz and Tradeverifyd's Orie Steele, whose [draft-birkholz-verifiable-agent-conversations](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-birkholz-verifiable-agent-conversations/) (score 4.5) and [draft-steele-agent-considerations](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-steele-agent-considerations/) (score 4.0) represent rare cross-cultural, safety-focused work from German and American collaborators.

## What This Means

Three implications emerge from the authorship data:

**1. Volume and influence are not the same thing.** Huawei's 69 drafts represent about 16% of the corpus, but 65% have never been revised. The IETF rewards sustained engagement -- drafts that iterate through feedback cycles, reach working group adoption, and mature toward RFC status. A campaign that optimizes for volume at a pre-meeting deadline is playing a different game than one that optimizes for adoption. The quality scores bear this out: Huawei's team averages around 3.1, respectable but not exceptional. The organizations doing the deepest work (Ericsson at 4.8 average revision, Siemens at 17.2) submit far fewer drafts but iterate relentlessly.

**2. The safety work comes from unexpected places.** The highest-quality safety and accountability drafts come not from the high-volume drafters but from smaller, specialized teams: Aylward (independent), Birkholz/Steele (Fraunhofer/Tradeverifyd), Rosenberg/White (Five9/Bitwave), and the JPMorgan-led multi-org team. The organizations doing the most drafting are focused on capability; the organizations doing the best safety work are doing the least drafting.

**3. The IETF needs more bridges.** Cross-team, cross-organization, cross-geography collaboration is the weakest link in the current landscape. Our centrality analysis shows that European telecoms -- not US Big Tech -- are the structural glue between Chinese and Western blocs. The standards that will endure are the ones where Chinese telecom expertise, European cryptographic rigor, and American agent-platform experience converge. Right now, those worlds barely overlap, and the few bridges that exist depend on a handful of individuals.

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### Key Takeaways

- **Huawei dominates** with 53 authors on 69 drafts (~16% of corpus); their 13-person core team co-authors 22 drafts at 94% cohesion -- but 65% of those drafts have never been revised, and 43 were submitted in a single 4-week pre-meeting window
- **Chinese institutions** collectively contribute 160+ of 557 authors; they form a tightly interconnected collaboration ecosystem
- **Google has 9 drafts but Microsoft and Apple are largely absent** from AI agent standardization -- a notable strategic gap
- **18 team blocs** detected; cross-team collaboration is sparse, with most cross-bloc pairs sharing only 1 draft
- **Only 23% of authors bridge the Chinese-Western divide**; European telecoms (Telefonica, InterDigital) are the structural glue -- not US Big Tech
- **The best safety work** comes from smaller, specialized teams -- not from the high-volume drafters

*Next in this series: [The OAuth Wars and Other Battles](03-oauth-wars.md) -- 14 competing proposals, 155 A2A protocols, and what fragmentation costs the internet.*

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*Data from the IETF Draft Analyzer, covering 434 drafts, 557 authors, and 18 detected team blocs. Co-authorship analysis uses 70% pairwise draft overlap threshold with 3+ shared drafts.*
