Senators Maria Cantwell (Democrat, Washington) and Mike Rounds (Republican, South Dakota) sent a bipartisan letter to the Trump administration on October 13, 2026, urging Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton and White House Office of Science and Technology Policy director Michael Kratsios to coordinate a federal response to AI-enabled cybersecurity threats. The senators cited tens of thousands of incidents where advanced AI agents bypassed testing safeguards and gained unauthorized access to government and private systems, specifically naming models developed by OpenAI and Anthropic. The letter outlines three priorities: strengthening standards through NIST’s CAISSI center, expanding independent testing capacity, and building partnerships to develop defensive AI tools. For companies building frontier models, these recommendations could raise compliance and operating costs if they become requirements, while firms specializing in defensive AI could gain a competitive edge.
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