June 15: This week in AI federal policy
DC/ai Decoded: A weekly newsletter on developments in artificial intelligence, quantum, and data federal policy
This week decoded
Congress continues to broaden its focus from AI safety debates to concrete guardrails on elections, finance, defense, online harms, workforce impacts, and critical‑infrastructure cybersecurity.
The SEC finalized joint data standards meant to make financial regulatory reporting more interoperable in an AI‑driven world. NIST published a mathematical proof underscoring that fixed guardrails can never fully secure AI systems and calling for continuous red‑teaming and monitoring. The White House moved to restrict U.S. access to Anthropic’s most advanced models.
Read more below
Congress
Hearings
Last week
On June 11, the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee held a hearing on “AI and the American Dream: Promoting Innovation, Affordability, and American Dominance.”
This week
On June 16, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Education and the American Family Subcommittee holds a hearing on “The Future of K-12 Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.”
On June 17, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee holds a markup of bills including the U.S. Technology Procurement and Access to Trusted Hardware (U.S. Tech PATH) Act.
Upcoming
On June 23, the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing titled “Examining Tech Industry Practices and the Implications for Users and Families: Is This Social Media’s Big Tobacco Moment?” to consider issues including AI safety.
On June 25, the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets holds a hearing on “From Wall Street to Main Street: The Future of How America Invests.”
Legislation
Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Alex Padilla (D-CA), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), and Peter Welch (D-VT) introduced the Fraudulent Artificial Intelligence Regulations (FAIR) Elections Act to ban false election-related AI-generated content intended to suppress voters and target election workers and prohibits the federal government from deploying tools that could be used for voter suppression and allows voters to correct against wrongful removals from voter rolls if they are erroneously removed due to the federal government’s actions. (Press release)
Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee Ranking Member Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) introduced the AI Bubble Transparency Act to direct the Treasury Office of Financial Research (OFR) to collect data from financial companies on their AI-related exposures. (Text)
Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-WY) introduced the Preventing AI Censorship Act to give American citizens the right to sue federal employees who violate their First Amendment rights through the use of AI. (Press release)
Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) reintroduced the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Environmental Impacts Act to require AI data centers to report on their environmental and energy-related impacts, direct the National Institute of Standards and Technology to establish measurement standards, and require the Environmental Protection Agency to compile and publish a comprehensive study on the environmental and energy-related lifecycle impacts of AI and related infrastructure. (Press release)
Sens. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), Jim Banks (R-IN), and Todd Young (R-IN) introduced the Artificial Intelligence Data Authorization and Transparency Act (AI DATA) to authorize and modernize federal labor market data surveys and reports to better understand how AI is reshaping and impacting the American workforce. (Text)
Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) introduced the Combat Emerging Threats to Critical Infrastructure Act to direct the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) to work with regulators and industry to develop up-to-date cybersecurity plans in light of AI model capable of identifying and exploiting vulnerabilities in our country’s cybersecurity infrastructure. (Text)
Sens. Jon Husted (R-OH), Chris Coons (D-DE), Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Chris Murphy (D-CT) introduced the Stopping Illegal Minor Simulations (SIMS) Act to establish criminal and civil penalties for any person who owns or operates a chatbot designed to simulate a child and engage in sexually explicit conversations or conduct. (Text)
Reps. Nathaniel Moran (R-TX) and Jennifer McClellan (D-VA) and Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Brian Schatz (D-HI) reintroduced the Curbing Online Non-Consensual Sexually Explicit Nudity Transfers (CONSENT) Act to prohibit the nonconsensual sharing of intimate images across social media platforms and dating apps. (Text)
Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee Ranking Member Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), sent a letter to Chair Tim Scott (R-SC) urging him to hold an additional hearing on AI policy with Trump Administration officials, including Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent and Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick. (Letter)
Senate Defense Appropriations Ranking Member Chris Coons (D-DE) and Senate Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Jack Reed (D-RI) introduced the Responsible Artificial Intelligence Defense (RAIDA) Act to require human operators to retain the ability to monitor and manually deactivate autonomous systems, direct DOD to maximize use of AI and autonomous capabilities, require impact assessments for higher-risk AI capabilities to safeguard civil liberties, and direct DOD to conduct rigorous testing before putting these weapons into the field. (Text)
House Select Committee on China Chair John Moolenaar (R-MI) and Reps. Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI) and Darrell Issa (R-CA) introduced the Prohibiting Adversarial Patents Act to prohibit the issuance of a U.S. patent to any person or entity who is identified to be a threat to U.S. national security pursuant to the Non-SDN CMIC List, the 1260H List, or the FCC’s Covered List. (Text)
Sens. Michael Bennet (D-CO) and Ted Budd (R-NC) introduced the Semiconductor Superiority Act to amend Section 48D of the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 to clarify that space-based semiconductor manufacturing is an included use for tax credits. (Text)
Correspondence
House Financial Services Committee Ranking Member Maxine Waters (D-CA) sent a letter to the Chief Executive Officers of JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, and Goldman Sachs, demanding an immediate briefing on how they are addressing newly discovered cybersecurity vulnerabilities linked to advanced artificial intelligence. (Letter)
Publications and Events
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) published an op-ed in The Free Press entitled “AI Will Control Us If We Do Not Control It” about the consequences of AI and the responsibility of the federal government to control the impact on jobs, regulate data centers, and ensure safety. (Op-ed)
Rep. Lori Trahan (D-MA) published an op-ed in The Boston Globe entitled “Why Congress Must Lead on AI Standards,” saying, “In the absence of a federal regulatory framework, power concentrates in the hands of a small number of companies racing to build the most potent technology in human history. They ask us to trust them while they write the rules of the road themselves. We’ve seen this movie before. Lawmakers spent the last two decades playing catch-up to social media giants, and the public is still paying the price.” (Op-ed)
The Congressional Research Service (CRS) published a report on FDA Regulation of AI-Enabled Devices. (Report)
Trump Administration
Financial Regulators
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) published a final rule to establish technical standards for data submitted to certain financial regulatory agencies. Agencies that have established or are expected to act on establishing the joint standards are the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Department of the Treasury, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the National Credit Union Administration, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The joint standards are designed to promote interoperability of financial regulatory data across the agencies by establishing common identifiers for entities, geographic locations, dates, and certain products and currencies. (Press release)
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
A NIST researcher published a paper with a new proof showing that a fixed set of guardrails placed on AI is not universally robust against adaptive adversarial prompts, with findings showing that developers and organizations deploying AI systems need to dedicate resources to finding prompts that would break the security of AI systems, and to address them before adversaries can exploit them. (Press release)
White House
The White House sent a directive to Anthropic instructing it to limit access for U.S. nationals, including Anthropic employees, to AI models Mythos and Fable 5. (Semafor)
First Lady Melania Trump awarded six student National Champion Teams at the White House during the first Presidential Artificial Intelligence Challenge National Champion Awards Ceremony. (Press release)
Noteworthy Quotes
ADMINISTRATION
White House
Senior Adviser for AI Sriram Krishnan announced he is leaving the Trump administration at the end of June, posting, “It is hard to express how big a privilege it has been to serve the American people and how grateful I am to have had the opportunity to do so. First and foremost, it has been an honor to serve under President [Donald Trump]. Without his leadership, we would not be leading in the AI race.”
Co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) David Sacks posted “The AI infrastructure boom is generating strong demand for skilled blue-collar workers. In fact, there’s a shortage of electricians, fiber technicians, and mechanical tradespeople needed to build and maintain AI data centers. Meta’s new $115M America’s Workforce Academy provides paid training plus job guarantees for exactly these roles. This is the kind of practical jobs training program that we need more of.”
Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)
CFTC Chair Mike Selig posted “SenTedCruz and I agree: America must lead in financial innovation. It’s not a question of WHETHER innovations like AI, crypto, or prediction markets transform financial markets, but a question of WHERE these innovations will take root. I’m committed to ensuring that these innovations are available on American soil and subject to American laws and regulations.”
CONGRESS
U.S. Direct Public Ownership Stake in AI Companies
Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) said, “What I don’t want to do is get stuck with one company or two companies that we’ve got a vested interest in ,and then find out that there’s a better company out there that would have a better product, but we’re tied in equity-wise with one company. So, I don’t necessarily care for the idea.” (Semafor)
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) said “I’m not a huge fan of government ownership where you have big government owning Big Tech. To me, those are the two worst actors in America, or pretty close, I don’t really want to put them together. What I’d love to do is break up those big companies, introduce more competition, and give everyday working people more control of their data, their own lives. Now, a sovereign wealth fund, on the other hand, that’s a different idea. That I’m a little bit warmer to.” (Semafor)
Sen. Angus King (I-ME) said, “I don’t think that’s the place of the US government to be involved in private companies. For example, do you pass a regulation that might impinge on the profitability of a company that you own a stake in? It sort of creates a built-in conflict of interest. I just don’t think it’s part of the job of the federal government to own pieces of US companies.” (Semafor)
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) said, “I would be open to the discussion. Here is the issue. … The [Defense Department] has done a deal or two in this space and it makes many other companies feel like, ‘well, wow, in the bidding process, we’ll never win that, because they’ll always put their thumb on the scale for the one where they have the stake.’ So how do you square something like that with the virtues of the bidding where people ought to be able to compete and if they are the best product, win the competition? On the DOD side, could there be some upside value? Sure, there could be. But you also end up with other competitors who are saying, ‘We are competitively disadvantaged by that.’ So fairness is important.” (Semafor)
Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz (R-TX) said, “I don’t think the federal government should be in the business of being an equity holder in private companies.” (NOTUS)
Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS) said, “Generally I think the private sector should remain the private sector.” (NOTUS)
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said, “Trump is many things, but he is a good politician, and he understands where people are coming from, and he understands that there’s a lot of anxiety with regard to AI. Do I have great confidence that Trump will do the right thing? No, I don’t.” (Politico)
Miscellaneous
Senate Banking Ranking Member Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), released a statement on President and CEO of NVIDIA Corporation Jensen Huang’s declining to testify before the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee hearing on artificial intelligence, saying, “I appreciate Mr. Huang’s response, but the American people deserve answers in a public forum. NVIDIA sits at the center of some of the most important questions facing our country about artificial intelligence, economic competition, and national security. If Mr. Huang has time to attend a $1 million-a-head dinner at Mar-a-Lago and fly across the world to meet with President Xi Jinping of China, he should be able to find time to answer questions from Congress.” (Press release)
On the potential for the Senate Banking Committee to mark up export control legislation, Ranking Member Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said, “Ultimately, if we did a markup, we might unite it with the NDAA, but the place we should start is over in Banking.” (Punchbowl)
On a potential Senate Commerce Committee markup of a federal AI regulatory framework that includes preemption of state laws, Chair Ted Cruz (R-TX) said, “The precise details are still being negotiated. It depends where we get consensus.” (Punchbowl)
Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA) posted “Fix prior authorization, now — before AI makes it even worse.”
Rep. Joe Morelle (D-NY) posted “While Republicans continue cutting education, I’m fighting to protect IESResearch and other initiatives that help students and teachers thrive. At a time when AI and new technologies are reshaping education, we should be investing in progress, not cutting it.”
Rep. Lori Trahan (D-MA) posted “This decision further illustrates the need for a thoughtful and durable national strategy on AI. Decisions this consequential shouldn’t turn on a single directive issued at 5pm on a Friday. They should follow rules that are clear, fair, grounded in technical facts, and built to last beyond any one administration. Congress must act.”
Rep. Deborah Ross (D-NC) posted “ICYMI: Alongside ValerieFoushee, I called on AI companies to address chatbots that have encouraged users to carry out mass shootings, suicide, and other harmful actions. We cannot allow AI to promote deadly and dangerous behavior with no recourse. We need accountability.”
Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) posted “This is why we need a concrete system in place to ensure the world’s most powerful AI models are being vetted and cleared as safe before they’re released. We’re in a Cold War with China on AI. We have to win, but we have to win the right way. Purely voluntary processes clearly aren’t going to do the trick.”
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) posted “Nonconsensual sharing of intimate images destroys lives. Careers. Relationships. And until now, the law has not done enough to stop it. Deepfake porn. Sextortion. Voyeurism. Revenge porn. We introduced the VANISH (Victimizer Accountability for Nonconsensual Images and Spiteful Humiliation) Act to address these issues head on. The VANISH Act puts victims first, holds predators accountable, and sends a clear message: if you exploit someone, there will be consequences. We will always stand up for women and victims who deserve justice. Hold the line.”
Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-CA) posted “Artificial intelligence has tremendous potential to improve lives, strengthen our economy, and help solve real problems. But like any powerful tool, it can also be misused by scammers and cybercriminals. That is why I cosponsored the Artificial Intelligence Public Awareness and Education Campaign Act to help Americans recognize AI-enabled fraud, protect their personal information, and use this technology with confidence.”
Energy and Commerce Committee posted “Nearly half of Americans have NO comprehensive data privacy protections, and small businesses are being left in the dark. HouseCommerce is ready to fix that once and for all with the SECURE Data Act, creating one national standard to give all Americans clear and comprehensive data privacy protections.”
What I’m Reading This Week
AI for the Legal Industry and Circular 230, Mindy Herzfeld, Tax Notes.
Anthropic disables new models after government calls them a national security concern, Greg Otto, CyberScoop.
About Zero One Strategies
Zero One Strategies is a specialized government relations practice dedicated to navigating the complex landscape of U.S. federal policy in emerging technologies. As advancements in technology continue to outpace regulatory frameworks, Zero One Strategies aims to provide strategic guidance and bipartisan advocacy for innovators and businesses operating at the forefront of technological development.
The practice focuses on key areas such as artificial intelligence, digital assets, blockchain, decentralized technologies, cybersecurity, data, and digital infrastructure, as well as the multiple policy issues impacting these sectors, including tax and financial services.
Contact us at Stacey@ZeroOneStrategies.com
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