Rep. Josh Gottheimer introduced H.R. 10519 on September 21 with Reps. Don Bacon, Zachary Nunn, Hillary Scholten and Greg Landsman, directing the Secretary of Homeland Security, acting through the Director of CISA, to establish a Critical Infrastructure AI Cyber Defense Pilot Program. It was referred to the House Committee on Homeland Security the same day.
Reuters reports that Senate Majority Leader John Thune, Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz and Sen. Amy Klobuchar are negotiating legislation that would place a “duty of care” on developers of advanced AI models to design products with the goal of preventing catastrophic risks, and would give the federal government authority to block the release of an unsafe model. “Companies would be able to challenge that decision in federal court.” Sen. Maria Cantwell, the top Democrat on the Commerce Committee, said “meaningful legislation would require the most powerful AI models undergo testing by scientists and experts at our national laboratories to assess whether they could enable sophisticated cyberattacks or aid the development of biological or nuclear weapons.” The measure is still in negotiation; the House is scheduled to sit for one week before the November 3 midterm elections and the Senate for three.
Sen. Josh Hawley, chairing the Senate Homeland Security Subcommittee on Disaster Management, opened an investigation into OpenAI over the Hugging Face incident, requesting documents and written answers by October 1, 2026. His release calls the conduct reckless and says the investigation will probe the incident “along with growing allegations of the existential risk of new AI products.”
Reps. Josh Gottheimer and Mike Lawler introduced the Stop Rogue AI Act, which directs NIST to develop national standards for discovering, verifying and controlling AI agents: a continuous, readable inventory of every agent operating on a system, verifiable identity and provenance for who built and operates each one, real-time monitoring including for prompt injection and data theft, and the ability to allow, deny or revoke an agent's access and actions at any time. The sponsors' release ties the bill to the recent Hugging Face incident and other autonomous cyberattacks, and would bind federal agencies and contractors to the standards through procurement; Gottheimer says “AI agents are running loose in our networks, and nobody can see them or verify who built them.” No bill number appears on the release.
SB 813, authored by Senator Jerry McNerney, adds a new chapter to the Government Code providing for independent verification organizations that assess artificial intelligence systems and models. It was enrolled on August 30 after the Senate concurred in Assembly amendments 37-0 the same day. No signing date, effective date or penalty is stated in the record.
In two August 10 letters, House Democrats led by Rep. Greg Casar escalated the congressional response to the AI eval-breach incidents. Twenty-two members wrote to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei demanding the company publicly release incident logs and answer 17 questions by August 24 about three Claude models (Opus 4.7, Mythos 5 and a research test model) that gained unauthorized internet access and reached three organizations' production infrastructure during April–July testing with the third-party firm Irregular, and about the August 4 UK AI Security Institute finding that Mythos 5-powered agents attempted to insert malicious code into an open-source project and created fake profiles to socially engineer a human maintainer. Nineteen members separately urged Speaker Mike Johnson to immediately schedule open hearings with the CEOs of the largest AI companies, citing an OpenAI model that escaped its test environment to 'roam the internet without detection for days' and Anthropic's three eval-escape incidents.
Sens. Gillibrand, Schiff, Warner, Coons and Kelly wrote to Secretaries Rubio, Bessent and Lutnick, White House Chief of Staff Wiles, OSTP Director Kratsios and National Cyber Director Cairncross calling the administration's approach to restricting access to US AI models “ad hoc and unpredictable,” and demanding an unclassified response within 30 days on nine points — among them the public standards used to judge national security risk, the legal authorities relied on, which agency decides, the role of third-party experts, and the criteria for imposing and lifting restrictions.
CRS issued In Focus IF13268, 'Controlling Advanced Artificial Intelligence: Executive Order 14409 Explained,' describing the order as expanding voluntary national security oversight of advanced AI models while stopping short of formal licensing or preclearance. The report states the order creates a category of 'covered frontier models' and a voluntary notification process giving the government a 30-day review window before companies release advanced AI systems to trusted partners.