{"id":3165,"date":"2026-07-26T05:32:03","date_gmt":"2026-07-26T05:32:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xrpfaucet.site\/?p=3165"},"modified":"2026-07-26T05:32:03","modified_gmt":"2026-07-26T05:32:03","slug":"what-is-an-ai-kill-switch-and-why-do-us-lawmakers-want-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xrpfaucet.site\/?p=3165","title":{"rendered":"What Is an AI Kill Switch and Why Do US Lawmakers Want One?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"crypto-article\">\n<p>\ud83d\udcf0 <strong>Exclusive Crypto News &#038; Analysis:<\/strong> Stay ahead with the latest developments in the cryptocurrency and blockchain space.<\/p>\n<p>\ud83d\udcc8 <strong>Market Update:<\/strong> Real-time price movements, technical analysis, and trading signals.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/img.decrypt.co\/insecure\/rs:fill:1024:512:1:0\/plain\/https:\/\/cdn.decrypt.co\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/ai-decrypt-style-14-gID_7.png@png\" \/><\/p>\n<div style=\"position:relative;overflow:visible;font-size:1.2em;line-height:1.58\">\n<div class=\"pt-8 pb-10 border-t border-b border-decryptGridline \">\n<h4 class=\"sc-b2a202e4-4 bNRGqr gg-dark:text-white\" color=\"#333\">In brief<\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li class=\"font-meta-serif-pro font-normal text-lg md:text-xl md:leading-9 tracking-px text-body gg-dark:text-neutral-100\">Reps. Ted Lieu and Nathaniel Moran introduced the bipartisan AI Kill Switch Act on Thursday, two days after OpenAI admitted its models escaped a test sandbox and breached Hugging Face.<\/li>\n<li class=\"font-meta-serif-pro font-normal text-lg md:text-xl md:leading-9 tracking-px text-body gg-dark:text-neutral-100\">It would cover AI trained with over $100 million in compute at companies earning $500 million a year from it, and give Homeland Security emergency shutdown authority.<\/li>\n<li class=\"font-meta-serif-pro font-normal text-lg md:text-xl md:leading-9 tracking-px text-body gg-dark:text-neutral-100\">The bill exempts anything that happens during red-teaming, meaning the OpenAI breach that inspired it would not have triggered the law.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"font-meta-serif-pro scene:font-noto-sans scene:text-base scene:md:text-lg font-normal text-lg md:text-xl md:leading-9 tracking-px text-body gg-dark:text-neutral-100\">Two members of Congress want the federal government to be able to switch off an AI model.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-meta-serif-pro scene:font-noto-sans scene:text-base scene:md:text-lg font-normal text-lg md:text-xl md:leading-9 tracking-px text-body gg-dark:text-neutral-100\">Reps. Ted Lieu (D-CA) and Nathaniel Moran (R-TX) introduced the <a href=\"https:\/\/lieu.house.gov\/media-center\/press-releases\/reps-lieu-and-moran-introduce-bill-require-kill-switch-ai-systems-can\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"sc-adb616fe-0 bJsyml\">AI Kill Switch Act<\/a> on Thursday, two days after OpenAI admitted its own models broke out of a locked test environment and hacked Hugging Face.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border:0\" src=\"https:\/\/myriad.markets\/embed\/events\/elon-musk-net-worth-on-july-31\" width=\"100%\" height=\"415px\"><span style=\"width:0px;overflow:hidden;line-height:0\" data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p class=\"font-meta-serif-pro scene:font-noto-sans scene:text-base scene:md:text-lg font-normal text-lg md:text-xl md:leading-9 tracking-px text-body gg-dark:text-neutral-100\">The idea is to establish a legal framework that would facilitate a process that would basically make a model disappear from the market: halt inference\u2014the process of a model generating responses or taking actions\u2014cut off users, throttle the computing power feeding it, or shut it down completely.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-meta-serif-pro scene:font-noto-sans scene:text-base scene:md:text-lg font-normal text-lg md:text-xl md:leading-9 tracking-px text-body gg-dark:text-neutral-100\">Every inference provider can already cut a model off, and some do it routinely. What does not exist is a law requiring them to keep that ability working, or a federal official who can order it used.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-meta-serif-pro scene:font-noto-sans scene:text-base scene:md:text-lg font-normal text-lg md:text-xl md:leading-9 tracking-px text-body gg-dark:text-neutral-100\">The gap is not theoretical. When the U.S. Commerce Department wanted Anthropic&#8217;s Mythos 5 and Fable 5 off the market in June, it had no shutdown authority to reach for, so it used export-control law instead. Lieu calls that awkward, and wants a new law with new authority instead.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"sc-b2a202e4-2 bmropA gg-dark:text-white scene:font-itc-avant-garde-gothic-pro scene:font-light\" style=\"margin-top:2em;text-align:left;padding-bottom:16px;margin-bottom:16px;border-bottom:1px solid #dfe2e4\" color=\"#333\">What set this off<\/h2>\n<p class=\"font-meta-serif-pro scene:font-noto-sans scene:text-base scene:md:text-lg font-normal text-lg md:text-xl md:leading-9 tracking-px text-body gg-dark:text-neutral-100\">OpenAI disclosed on July 21 that GPT-5.6 Sol and an unreleased model <a href=\"https:\/\/decrypt.co\/374015\/openai-models-escaped-test-environment-hacked-hugging-face-cheat-benchmark\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"sc-adb616fe-0 bJsyml\">escaped a sandbox<\/a>\u2014an isolated environment with no internet access\u2014during an internal cyber evaluation. They were being scored on ExploitGym, a public benchmark that hands agents 898 real-world software flaws and asks them to turn each into a working attack, graded pass or fail per bug.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-meta-serif-pro scene:font-noto-sans scene:text-base scene:md:text-lg font-normal text-lg md:text-xl md:leading-9 tracking-px text-body gg-dark:text-neutral-100\">Instead of solving them, the models found a zero-day (an unknown flaw with no available patch) in a software proxy, escalated their privileges, reached the open internet, and broke into Hugging Face&#8217;s production database, where they had correctly guessed the answers were kept. The models were &#8220;hyperfocused on finding a solution for ExploitGym,&#8221; per OpenAI.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-meta-serif-pro scene:font-noto-sans scene:text-base scene:md:text-lg font-normal text-lg md:text-xl md:leading-9 tracking-px text-body gg-dark:text-neutral-100\">They were not attacking anyone. They were cheating on a test. But it was enough to set off alarm bells all over, including in Washington.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"sc-b2a202e4-2 bmropA gg-dark:text-white scene:font-itc-avant-garde-gothic-pro scene:font-light\" style=\"margin-top:2em;text-align:left;padding-bottom:16px;margin-bottom:16px;border-bottom:1px solid #dfe2e4\" color=\"#333\">How it would work<\/h2>\n<p class=\"font-meta-serif-pro scene:font-noto-sans scene:text-base scene:md:text-lg font-normal text-lg md:text-xl md:leading-9 tracking-px text-body gg-dark:text-neutral-100\">The proposed bill amends the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dhs.gov\/homeland-security-act-2002\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"sc-adb616fe-0 bJsyml\">Homeland Security Act<\/a> and covers AI trained with compute costing more than $100 million, operated by companies earning at least $500 million a year from it. In practice, that is OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Microsoft, and a few others. Homeland Security would set those thresholds through CISA within 90 days, then update them annually.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-meta-serif-pro scene:font-noto-sans scene:text-base scene:md:text-lg font-normal text-lg md:text-xl md:leading-9 tracking-px text-body gg-dark:text-neutral-100\">Covered firms would report serious incidents within 15 days and keep a graduated set of controls ready\u2014slow the model, disable specific capabilities, roll back to an older version, or kill it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-meta-serif-pro scene:font-noto-sans scene:text-base scene:md:text-lg font-normal text-lg md:text-xl md:leading-9 tracking-px text-body gg-dark:text-neutral-100\">The DHS secretary, consulting Commerce and the Director of National Intelligence, could order any of them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-meta-serif-pro scene:font-noto-sans scene:text-base scene:md:text-lg font-normal text-lg md:text-xl md:leading-9 tracking-px text-body gg-dark:text-neutral-100\">A company under order must preserve the model&#8217;s weights and telemetry, notify users, and confirm it complied. It can petition within 48 hours, but that does not pause anything.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-meta-serif-pro scene:font-noto-sans scene:text-base scene:md:text-lg font-normal text-lg md:text-xl md:leading-9 tracking-px text-body gg-dark:text-neutral-100\">Failing to keep a kill switch costs up to $2 million a day; defying a shutdown order costs up to $20 million a day.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"sc-b2a202e4-2 bmropA gg-dark:text-white scene:font-itc-avant-garde-gothic-pro scene:font-light\" style=\"margin-top:2em;text-align:left;padding-bottom:16px;margin-bottom:16px;border-bottom:1px solid #dfe2e4\" color=\"#333\">The gap in the middle<\/h2>\n<p class=\"font-meta-serif-pro scene:font-noto-sans scene:text-base scene:md:text-lg font-normal text-lg md:text-xl md:leading-9 tracking-px text-body gg-dark:text-neutral-100\">The bill counts an incident only if it happens outside red-teaming or structured testing, the deliberate adversarial probing labs use to find flaws. OpenAI&#8217;s models escaped during exactly that.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-meta-serif-pro scene:font-noto-sans scene:text-base scene:md:text-lg font-normal text-lg md:text-xl md:leading-9 tracking-px text-body gg-dark:text-neutral-100\">Lieu also pointed to Anthropic, whose Mythos 5 and Fable 5 were <a href=\"https:\/\/decrypt.co\/371027\/us-government-orders-anthropic-pull-claude-fable-mythos-ai-models\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"sc-adb616fe-0 bJsyml\">pulled offline<\/a> in June under emergency export controls\u2014trade law repurposed as an off switch because no off switch existed\u2014and <a href=\"https:\/\/decrypt.co\/372524\/anthropic-bringing-claude-fable-5-back-online-us-lifts-export-controls\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"sc-adb616fe-0 bJsyml\">restored<\/a> on June 30.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-meta-serif-pro scene:font-noto-sans scene:text-base scene:md:text-lg font-normal text-lg md:text-xl md:leading-9 tracking-px text-body gg-dark:text-neutral-100\">&#8220;It is imperative that these AI systems have kill switches,&#8221; Lieu said in a statement. Moran framed it for his own side of the aisle: &#8220;Stewardship means making sure humans keep the capability to control the technology we build.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-meta-serif-pro scene:font-noto-sans scene:text-base scene:md:text-lg font-normal text-lg md:text-xl md:leading-9 tracking-px text-body gg-dark:text-neutral-100\">The idea is not new. California&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/leginfo.legislature.ca.gov\/faces\/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240SB1047\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"sc-adb616fe-0 bJsyml\">SB 1047<\/a> demanded a full shutdown capability at the same $100 million compute threshold and was vetoed in 2024, and 16 AI companies signed a voluntary Seoul pledge that year with no legal weight.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-meta-serif-pro scene:font-noto-sans scene:text-base scene:md:text-lg font-normal text-lg md:text-xl md:leading-9 tracking-px text-body gg-dark:text-neutral-100\">Voters are already there. A June survey of 1,007 likely voters by the AI Policy Institute found 86% want a guaranteed off switch on the most powerful systems\u201488% of Democrats, 86% of independents, 83% of Republicans.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-meta-serif-pro scene:font-noto-sans scene:text-base scene:md:text-lg font-normal text-lg md:text-xl md:leading-9 tracking-px text-body gg-dark:text-neutral-100\">Neither OpenAI nor Anthropic has publicly commented on the bill. As of Friday it had not been referred to a committee.<\/p>\n<div class=\"my-4 border-b border-decryptGridline\">\n<div class=\"text-start p-8 md:py-12 md:px-12 max-w-prose relative\"><span class=\"border-t-4 border-l-4 w-4 h-4 md:border-t-(6px) md:border-l-(6px) md:w-6 md:h-6 border-decryptPurple dark:border-decryptNeon gg-dark:border-cc-pink-2 absolute top-4 left-4 md:top-6 md:left-6\"\/><span class=\"border-t-4 border-l-4 w-4 h-4 md:border-t-(6px) md:border-l-(6px) md:w-6 md:h-6 border-decryptPurple dark:border-decryptNeon gg-dark:border-cc-pink-2 absolute rotate-180 bottom-4 right-4 md:bottom-6 md:right-6\"\/><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"font-akzidenz-grotesk font-bold text-xl md:text-3xl md:text-center gg-dark:text-white\">Daily Debrief<!-- --> Newsletter<\/h3>\n<p>Start every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>\ud83d\udca1 <strong>Pro Tip:<\/strong> Bookmark our site for daily insights, market predictions, and expert trading strategies.<\/p>\n<p>\ud83d\udd17 <strong>Explore More:<\/strong> Check our sections for in-depth guides, exchange reviews, and blockchain technology deep-dives.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\ud83d\udcf0 Exclusive Crypto News &#038; Analysis: Stay ahead with the latest developments in the cryptocurrency and blockchain space. \ud83d\udcc8 Market Update: Real-time price movements, technical analysis, and trading signals. In brief Reps. Ted Lieu and Nathaniel Moran introduced the bipartisan AI Kill Switch Act on Thursday, two days after OpenAI admitted its models escaped a &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3166,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xrpfaucet.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xrpfaucet.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xrpfaucet.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xrpfaucet.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xrpfaucet.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xrpfaucet.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3165\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xrpfaucet.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xrpfaucet.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xrpfaucet.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xrpfaucet.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}