Human-in-the-loop is a latency constraint, not just a governance choice: in machine-speed engagements the oversight loop must move from the control path to the command/policy path, with autonomy executing at the edge.
It reframes human oversight as a placement decision inside a control loop with a latency budget rather than a binary on/off switch. Agent runtimes face the same choice: approval gates sitting inline on every action cap throughput and cause failures under time pressure; gates placed at authorization boundaries preserve accountability without paying the reaction-time cost.
Any autonomous system with irreversible or high-consequence actions needs an explicit split between the fast execution loop (machine-speed, at the edge) and the slow authorization loop (human command, policy-level), rather than one sequential human-approval pipeline.
Autonomous defense systems must operate without relying solely on human-in-the-loop reaction times in high-speed combat scenarios.
Autonomous systems must assist human decision-making without abdicating human responsibility for lethal force.