WASHINGTON — In a stance that puts him at odds with much of his party and the White House, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., used a Senate hearing on Wednesday to call for new artificial intelligence regulations, including through his own upcoming legislation that would clarify liability for “rogue” AI hacking incidents.

At the hearing on national security risks from those attacks held by the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee’s Disaster Management, District of Columbia and Census Subcommittee, which he chairs, Hawley asked lawmakers to focus on how AI firms can be held accountable for the actions of their agents.

“At the end of the day, they’re a product, and if you make that product in a reckless kind of way, and that product causes … significant harm and damage — they crash a hospital ER, they shut down a bank so that folks can’t get their money — if that happens, then it’s the people who made it who should be responsible,” Hawley said.

On Tuesday, Hawley announced plans to introduce legislation that would make AI firms liable for reckless design and users liable for reckless deployment. He says the bill would also make it clear that criminal penalties for hacking apply to AI companies or to users who deploy an AI agent to commit crimes.

The hearing and bill come as AI firms have disclosed multiple instances where their frontier models hacked systems, including government websites and outside companies.

Hawley’s position is in contrast to President Donald Trump and other Republicans who have urged holding back on regulation in order to compete with China.

Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., met Tuesday with AI industry executives in a closed-door meeting. The White House announced the executives had signed a commitment to certain safety values, which Trump called “morally binding.”

“We believe every company is responsible for developing its own technology safely and in a way that builds trust with customers and the public,” the document said, before laying out “layers of controls and audits” that companies should implement.

Hawley also said that he invited OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to the hearing but that Altman declined to attend.

An OpenAI spokesperson said that the company received the invitation on Friday.

“OpenAI is deeply engaged with Congress on federal policies to advance AI safety, including through dozens of meetings in recent weeks with members of both parties in both chambers,” the spokesperson said. “We look forward to continuing to work constructively and proactively with Senator Hawley and members of Congress on federal AI safety legislation that materially raises the safety bar.”

Hawley’s fellow Republicans on the subcommittee mostly hewed closer to the president’s position on AI, especially the necessity of competing with China in AI development.

Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., repeatedly said that “the Chinese Communist Party wants to destroy our way of life” and added that “we’ve got to continue to be competitive with AI.”

Meanwhile, Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, emphasized uses for “great technologies,” including in law enforcement and the military.

“Then we also have the fears that come along with that as well,” Ernst said. “But I am of this position that we must continue to innovate. We must continue to develop our capabilities. What we don’t want to do is fall behind China.”

Sen. Ashley Moody, R-Fla., spoke on the risk of AI-powered fraud and harm to children, and she questioned witnesses about transparency in the AI industry and legislative options for information sharing and incident reporting.

Democrats focused on mandatory safety standards and reviews.

The subcommittee’s ranking member, Sen. Andy Kim, D-N.J., mused on the potential political will to come to an agreement on AI regulation.

“I think that there’s a growing understanding … this is not going to be something that we can just base off of voluntary commitments from these different companies, that there needs to be input … to be able to ensure that these are not just empty declarations,” Kim said.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., urged support for another bill by Hawley, which Blumenthal co-sponsored and would require the Department of Energy to establish a program to test advanced AI and evaluate the risk of “adverse AI incidents.” Those incidents could include loss of control, weaponization of a system by foreign adversaries, or “a significant erosion of civil liberties, economic competition, and healthy labor markets.”

Possible options

Witnesses made recommendations for how Congress can legislate on AI and how existing laws can be used to respond to AI agent attacks.

Marius Hobbhahn, founder of the AI-focused group Apollo Research, recommended required embedded evaluations during AI development and internal use, as well as preserving agents’ “chain of thought” to track agent actions and reasoning.

Paul Ohm, a law professor at Georgetown University, said that the Federal Trade Commission’s “unfair and deceptive trade practices” prohibition, as well as state tort laws, could serve as the basis for accountability for AI in civil courts.

“The genius of the centuries-old common law system is that it is flexible and adaptable enough to apply time-tested liability principles in new and complex situations,” Ohm said.

Ohm said there is a place for criminal law, but that in some cases hacking or other laws could be limited by the need to prove intent, a standard written for human perpetrators. He also encouraged Congress to adopt strict liability for AI developers.

Trump has said that existing laws are sufficient, saying Tuesday at the meeting with tech CEOs that through the FBI and Department of Justice, “we automatically have regulation.”

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