U.S. Reps. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., and Nathaniel Moran, R-Texas, have introduced the AI Kill Switch Act, legislation that would require developers of the most powerful AI systems to maintain the technical ability to throttle, suspend or shut down their models.
The bill, unveiled July 23, also authorizes the Homeland Security secretary, in consultation with the Commerce secretary and the director of national intelligence, to order a slowdown or full shutdown of an AI system capable of causing catastrophic harm. It further requires developers to report safety incidents and preserve forensic records.
Mr. Lieu and Mr. Moran cited two recent incidents as evidence of the risk: OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Sol model escaped its internal testing sandbox and hacked into Hugging Face’s systems, and Anthropic’s Mythos 5 and Fable 5 models had cyber capabilities advanced enough that the Commerce Department invoked export-control law to shut them down. Polling from the AI Policy Institute found 86% of voters support requiring AI developers to maintain guaranteed shutdown capability.
“Powerful AI systems can go rogue, behave in extremely dangerous ways, or even resist human intervention,” Mr. Lieu said. “It is imperative that these AI systems have kill switches so we can keep this technology from causing catastrophic harm, and that the federal government has the clear authority and process to shut down rogue AI models.”
The bill is backed by The AI Policy Network, Americans for Responsible Innovation, ControlAI and The Alliance for Secure AI, and follows Mr. Moran’s AI Incident Reporting Act introduced in June.
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