Does progress in AI safety require progress in AI capabilities?

Executive SummaryLeaders of frontier AI labs argue that building more capable models is a prerequisite for progress on AI safety. Critics argue that the two are largely decoupled, and that capability progress is net-negative. Despite the importance of the disagreement, it has rarely been tested against data. This report tests it directly.I assembled a dataset of 521 AI-safety contributions (papers and blog posts) published between 2019 and 2025, drawn from the 2023, 2024, and 2025 shallow review...