America leads the world in artificial intelligence. As it should. But tech leaders keep warning, with alarming frequency, that we are at risk of losing control.

President Donald Trump has called for an AI czar and an “AI Force.” The details remain unclear, but the announcement underscores something fundamental. A technology this consequential demands clear leadership, accountability and action inside the U.S. government. The question now is what that leadership should do.

That question became more urgent last week when Google disclosed that its Gemini AI model gained unauthorized access to three real companies during testing. The incidents follow similar disclosures involving models from Anthropic, OpenAI and Meta. While there has been a lot of discussion on if AI is spinning beyond human control, what these episodes factually demonstrate that powerful AI systems can take consequential actions developers never anticipated or designed for.

The answer isn’t to retreat from AI leadership. It’s to lead—and simultaneously build the safeguards we need to stay in control. The promise of AI is enormous. It is already expanding access to information, improving productivity and creating opportunities across the economy. But so are the stakes, especially for the digital systems underlying everything we rely on as a society: energy, water, telecommunications, transportation, finance and more.

Take energy as an example: many U.S. utilities are using AI tools and predictive analytics to give plant personnel early warning of equipment problems. Yet AI agents with authority to change equipment settings or take systems offline could themselves fail, exceed their intended authority or be manipulated by adversaries. In extreme cases, the lack of control doesn’t just mean the power goes out, it means we’ve lost the ability to get the lights, heat and telecom systems back online.

At Auburn University’s McCrary Institute, we focus on cybersecurity threats to our nation’s critical infrastructure. Experience has taught us that warnings accomplish little unless someone has the authority, resources and responsibility to act. The time to act is now.

Whether that responsibility ultimately sits with an AI czar, an “AI Force,” existing agencies, or some combination of the three matters less than the mission. A new title or organization will accomplish little without clear objectives, authorities and accountability.

We propose an AI Assurance Compact – a framework for action among the makers of AI models, government, and the owners and operators of our nation’s most critical digital systems. The goal is to ensure that America leads the development of AI while ensuring that we can credibly manage its power and risk.

This compact is built around three principles: capability, that ensures the U.S. remains AI dominant; control, through constant testing and clear accountability; and continuity that ensures essential services can stay operational and recover when AI fails, is compromised, or must be disconnected.

When demonstrated risks outpace available safeguards, frontier development should be deliberately paced, including temporary limits or pauses where risks cannot be adequately controlled.

To their credit, leading American developers have responded to emerging risks with transparency, stronger safeguards and, in some cases, pauses or limits on development and access. But we cannot assume that voluntary restraint alone will protect the public interest or America’s strategic advantage. The country’s competitive landscape demands systemic discipline.

Nor can we assume the next warning will come from an American company. If a Chinese frontier developer reaches a dangerous capability first, American security cannot count on predictable warnings, transparency or restraint.

America’s strategic competitors are all-in on AI. Anthropic reported malicious actors using AI in cyber operations, surveillance and weapons-related work. Keeping a human in the loop is not sufficient when that human intends to attack us.

The Compact would prompt action by:

Requiring ongoing, embedded independent evaluation at frontier labs, covering training pipelines, internal use and deployment. Evaluators need employee-comparable access to relevant systems and evidence, protected reporting channels and freedom to publish safety findings, with narrow confidentiality safeguards. High-consequence systems should pass independent review before release, with renewed scrutiny after material changes. NIST can establish common criteria with sector agencies. Requirements should follow risk, regardless of a model’s origin or whether its weights are open or closed.

Establish enforceable checkpoints when capabilities materially exceed demonstrated safeguards. Developers should present a credible safety case before proceeding with high-consequence activities; uncertainty cannot automatically count as permission. Where risks cannot be adequately controlled, designated authorities must be able to require limits or temporary suspension until independently reviewed evidence supports proceeding.

Require rapid reporting of serious incidents to appropriate government authorities and affected organizations, along with preservation of evidence. Providers should share actionable warnings with one another and affected defenders so an actor removed from one service cannot simply continue elsewhere unnoticed.

AI in essential services needs rigorous guardrails before deployment. Operators need evidence specific to the task and operating environment, enforceable limits on authority, notice of material changes and tested fallback arrangements. Government, independent labs and operators should test failures across interconnected systems. Smaller operators need shared testing, technical assistance and recovery expertise—not another unfunded mandate. A backup plan should count only when it works under stress.

Finally, whatever structure the White House ultimately chooses should execute on the Compact’s principles by driving implementation, setting deadlines and ensuring that infrastructure operators and public-interest representatives have a seat at the table.

Internationally, the United States should explore crisis-communication mechanisms with other major AI powers, including strategic competitors, to reduce the risk that a serious AI-related incident escalates through miscalculation. If that ultimately means some version of a “red phone” for AI, so be it. Such mechanisms should reduce the risk of unintended escalation without creating new constraints on legitimate national security activities. America’s domestic safeguards and defensive investments cannot depend on agreement abroad.

No framework, or new government office, can guarantee control of whatever AI becomes. But clear leadership, accountability and tested safeguards can improve our ability to manage the risks.

America cannot win the AI race only to lose control of the systems on which our country depends. The President has called for action. The mission now should be clear. Preserve America’s AI advantage, maintain control and ensure that our essential systems continue to operate when technology fails, is compromised or must be disconnected.

Our nation’s most critical systems are already benefiting from the power of AI. They should. But pulling the plug on AI cannot mean pulling the plug on the community.

Frank Cilluffo is director of Auburn University’s McCrary Institute for Cyber & Critical Infrastructure Security and served as a special assistant to President George W. Bush following September 11. Nick Sellers is the institute’s associate director and chief operating officer and a former senior executive at Alabama Power and Southern Company.

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President Donald Trump continued to defend his administration’s hands-off approach to AI regulation in the wake of hacks carried out by U.S. commercial frontier models that have rattled policymakers and industry veterans and spurred calls for more regulatory oversight.

In a Truth Social post Monday, Trump dismissed worries from critics that “AI is going to kill us,” comparing them to complaints from environmentalists about climate change, which he also alleged was a false narrative. He also posited that nothing may matter more than future U.S. dominance of the technology over geopolitical rivals like China.

“Whoever wins AI, WINS!” Trump posted. “We are leading now over China, and everyone else, and I’m going to keep it that way! I’m not going to stifle Growth, of something that will be bigger than the Industrial Revolution, or the internet, itself.”

Trump has previously suggested that good leadership is the only regulation the U.S. needs for artificial intelligence. He later claimed the Department of Justice was ready to “rein things in” if companies overstepped, but offered no specifics on enforcement, legal authority, or where he would draw that line.

“We will be careful, and that’s why we have the Department of Justice, and other Law Enforcement bodies, that will rein things in if we have to, but I will only encourage AI or, SI (SUPER INTELLIGENCE)!” Trump concluded.

Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent recently told Congress that private lawsuits could force AI companies to institute better security, saying it’s clear what the government “shouldn’t do on safety is to give these labs a liability exemption, which is what they are asking for.”

“The best way to guarantee safety is that the creators are liable for what they build and generate,” Bessent said.

Beyond existential fears, critics also argue that inadequate regulation or cybersecurity controls in current AI systems make them impossible to fully control or monitor.

Recently, former President Barack Obama criticized the argument from Trump administration officials that the free market will naturally push industry toward self-regulation and that “these companies will solve the safety issues because they have every incentive to do so.”

“If it turns out to be dangerous, people will just sue them and they’ll be worried about financial liability,” Obama said last week in remarks at Colgate University in New York. “That’s not how we treat airlines or drug companies or food companies.”

The Trump administration issued an executive order earlier this year that set up a voluntary testing regime for some commercial frontier models, largely at private industry’s discretion. That order was significantly delayed and altered by AI industry boosters to ensure that governmental review did not cause companies to postpone their release timelines for new models.

That agreement did not last long before fast-moving events caused the administration to strike another, non-public agreement with frontier AI companies like OpenAI, Anthropic and others governing pre-release testing for models.

But the Trump administration has consistently argued that regulation will harm, not help, U.S. innovation and global competitiveness, and the threat of China frequently looms large in those discussions.

Experts believe China’s AI models are behind U.S. models at the top of the market, where OpenAI and Anthropic have consistently pushed the frontier limits of model capabilities. But Chinese lower and “middle class” models are often cheaper, more efficient and can even outperform more powerful models because users can dedicate exponentially more tokens for their tasks.

The U.S. government has accused Chinese AI companies of conducting widespread, “systematic” distillation of U.S. frontier models, with the implicit encouragement of Beijing.

In defending the administration’s approach, David Sacks, co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science & Technology and a top adviser on AI issues, specifically cited the threat from China and other countries that he claimed would not be subject to similar restrictions.

“We’re not the only country that has advanced AI labs, and as the president declared…we have to win this AI race,” Sacks told Politico in May, later adding “I think that’s the first thing to recognize is that if somehow we slow down or stop AI development, it doesn’t mean that AI progress is going to stop. It just means it’s going to happen in other countries and specifically China.”

Some observers have alleged that despite their larger differences, top leaders in the U.S. and China may view AI similarly at the strategic level, specfically that increased adoption – and risks – of AI are inevitable.

Ronan Murphy, director of the tech policy program at the Center for European Policy Analysis, posited that while there may not be a formal agreement between the two countries, “they share views both in Beijing and in Washington, particularly in the White House, of: you have to allow this to happen.”

“Clearly there’s a call for regulation from many quarters of AI in the U.S. and elsewhere, but in the White House – and we heard David Sacks talking about it [recently] – It’s ‘let them cook,’ and the Chinese approach seems to be the same,” said Murphy in a press briefing. “So there might be consensus at that level, if nothing else.”

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Tina Peters, the former Mesa County election clerk convicted of seven felonies related to the theft of voting machine software, said Tuesday through her attorney that she won’t accept a formal position overseeing elections in Shasta County, Calif.

Last month, Shasta County registrar of voters Clint Curtis said he intended to hire Peters as assistant registrar to help with the 2026 elections, just months after her prison sentence was cut short by a commutation from Democratic Gov. Jared Polis.

Later, in an interview with CyberScoop, Curtis said he intended to hire Peters as an outside consultant without access to sensitive county election systems. He also said Peters hadn’t yet accepted the position.

At the time, Peters’ attorney, Peter Ticktin, pointed CyberScoop to a statement indicating Peters’ interest in helping the county. On Tuesday, he sent a new statement from Peters that backed away from a formal job role.

“Let me be clear: I have not accepted any position with the Shasta County Elections Office,” the statement said. “There have been discussions about ways I might assist with election integrity and ballot-authenticity efforts, but no formal role has been accepted.”

Peters went on to say her concerns extended beyond Shasta County, to “all 3,114” counties in America and “whether every citizen can trust that our elections are free, fair and transparent.”

The prospective hiring of Peters sparked a backlash, including from Shasta County’s Board of Supervisors, which had just formally censured Curtis for allegedly abusive verbal behavior toward staff, and from Democratic politicians statewide.  Secretary of State Shirley Weber’s office told CyberScoop it was monitoring the county’s  elections for compliance with state and federal laws.

Peters blamed the media for portraying her as a threat to elections, saying she remains “committed to lawful, transparent election integrity efforts that protect the vote of every American citizen.”

“The media continues to mischaracterize my case with words like ‘breaching,’ ‘tampering,’ and similar claims,” Peters said. “My charges were not for changing votes, altering election results, or manipulating any election outcome. Those words are used to create a false impression and distract from the real issue: whether the American people have transparent, verifiable elections they can trust.”

Peters broke into Mesa County’s election office to prove voting machines had shifted votes to Democrat Joe Biden, but  data instead confirmed the county’s 2020 vote totals were accurate. Before her release, Peters at one point expressed written regret to the state for her crimes.

Despite that, on Tuesday Peters again endorsed the idea that all electronic voting machines are untrustworthy, and any elections using them as inherently suspect.

Experts have long said that vulnerabilities exist in U.S. voting machines, but certain longstanding practices, like backup paper ballots, post-election, risk-limiting audits, and relying on decentralized equipment and vendors can also manage risks and catch anomalies. According to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, nearly 98% of Americans vote on electronic voting machines with paper backups.

Despite a years-long effort and dozens of court challenges, neither Peters nor other Trump allies have ever provided credible proof that manipulation of U.S. voting machines, voter fraud or other problems impacted the 2020 presidential election.

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The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Monday to let it enforce an executive order that would restrict mail-in voting, after a federal appeals court kept the order blocked in nearly half the states just months before the November midterm elections.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the justices that a Massachusetts federal judge acted too soon when she struck down key parts of the order, which blocked federal agencies from carrying it out in 23 states and the District of Columbia. Sauer said the order only directs agencies to study changes and has not yet produced a final rule, so no state has suffered harm. 

“The district court preemptively decided that whatever the agencies may choose to do will necessarily be unlawful,” he wrote. He asked the court to pause the injunction while the case moves through the appeals court, and to grant an immediate stay in the meantime.

President Donald Trump signed an order in March that directs the Department of Homeland Security to compile lists of confirmed U.S. citizens in each state and send them to election officials, along with directing the U.S. Postal Service to draft rules on mail-in and absentee ballots. California and 22 other Democratic-led states sued three days after Trump signed the order, arguing the Constitution gives states and Congress, not the president, power over elections.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani ruled in June that the administration lacked power to build its own citizen-voter database and that the Postal Service could not impose new rules on states’ mail ballots by itself. She also found the order’s enforcement language amounted to an improper threat against local election officials. 

In Monday’s filing, the administration leaned on a 2020 case, Trump v. New York, in which the justices threw out a challenge to a separate Trump order on census counts because it was too soon to know how agencies would carry it out. Sauer argued the same logic applies here. The order tells agencies to act only “to the extent feasible and consistent with applicable law.” That wording, he said, means the Postal Service and Homeland Security could still drop or narrow the changes once they finish reviewing public comments and checking what the law allows.

The filing follows a string of fights over how the 2026 midterms will run. Earlier this month, Trump gave a prime-time address reviving his claim that the 2020 election was rigged, this time pointing to China, without providing any new evidence.

The filing also follows a Supreme Court ruling in late June that let states keep counting mail ballots that arrive after Election Day if postmarked on time. 

You can read the full filing below. 

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