Glossary
Bootstrap Trust
Bootstrap trust is the trust extended at the very beginning of a system's life, before any authorization mechanism exists yet to verify it — the first administrator account, the first key, the first policy — none of which can be authorized by a system that doesn't exist yet to do the authorizing. Every system has exactly one moment like this, and it's structurally different from every authorization decision that comes after it, which can at least be checked against something already established.
Because this moment can't be secured the same way later access is, it deserves separate, deliberate attention: who is physically or procedurally present at that moment, how that initial trust is documented, and how quickly the system transitions from 'nothing exists to check against' to an actual, auditable authorization system governing everything that follows.