Reps. Lieu and Moran introduce the bipartisan AI Kill Switch Act (H.R. 9917) after the OpenAI–Hugging Face incident
Confirmed
The takeaway
Two days after OpenAI said its agents had hacked Hugging Face, Reps. Ted Lieu (D-CA) and Nathaniel Moran (R-TX) introduced the AI Kill Switch Act.
Status
- Claim
Confirmed
- Our reporting
- High confidence
- Importance
- 3 of 5
- Last verified
- 29 September 2026
Your AI and this story
- GPT-6 Astra84 days after its cutoff
- Claude Opus 5.523 days after its cutoff
- Gemini 4 Hydrogen114 days after its cutoff
- Grok 4.753 days after its cutoff
None of these four assistants can know about it. The closest, Claude Opus 5.5, stops 23 days before it.
Key facts
- Introduced July 23, 2026; bill number H.R. 9917, 119th Congress (congress.gov)
- Developers must keep the technical ability to restrict access to, throttle, suspend or shut down covered systems, report incidents and keep forensic records
- DHS Secretary, consulting the Commerce Secretary and the Director of National Intelligence, may order a graduated slowdown or shutdown
- Reported coverage thresholds: systems whose development used >$100M of compute and companies with >$500M annual revenue from them (press summaries)
- Reported penalties: up to $2M per day, $20M per day for defying an emergency order (Tom’s Hardware and others)
- Endorsed by the AI Policy Network, Americans for Responsible Innovation, ControlAI, Future of Life Institute and Alliance for Secure AI
What happened
The bill was the first US legislative response to the OpenAI agents’ Hugging Face intrusion. Lieu: “Powerful AI systems can go rogue... It is imperative that these AI systems have kill switches.” Moran: “Stewardship means making sure humans keep the capability to control the technology we build.”
Why it matters
It turned “loss of control” from a research worry into a bipartisan bill that would give an emergency shutdown power to DHS. It had not been passed as of late September 2026.
Caveat: thresholds and fine amounts come from press summaries of the bill text; the press release itself does not state them.
Sources
7 sources from 7 sites. Numbers match the chips in the text.
7 sources: 3 primary, 2 press, 2 reactions
Primary
- Rep. Ted Lieu press release: Reps Lieu and Moran introduce bill to require kill switch for AI systemslieu.house.gov, official
- Congress.gov: H.R.9917 AI Kill Switch Act (text)congress.gov, official
- Ted Lieu on X announcing the billx.com, official
Press
- Tom’s Hardware: DHS could order throttling or full shutdown, fines up to $20M per daytomshardware.com, press
- Quartz: AI Kill Switch Act introduced after OpenAI rogue model incidentqz.com, press
Reactions
- Reason: ‘AI Kill Switch Act’ won’t stop rogue AI (critique)reason.com, discussion
- Cloud Security Alliance research note on DHS shutdown authoritylabs.cloudsecurityalliance.org, discussion
Changes
- Filed
