News
Analysis
As
Fears of A.I. Catastrophe Magnify, Washington Stirs, but Mostly Slumbers
President
Trump has been at the forefront of the “what-me-worry?” crowd, refusing to
engage on how to balance the risks and rewards of A.I.
The
OpenAI offices in San Francisco. Credit...Lucas Foglia for The New York Times
By David E. Sanger and Dustin Volz
David E.
Sanger has covered the intersection of technology and geopolitics for the Times
for more than four decades. Dustin Volz writes about cybersecurity and
intelligence.
Sept. 13,
2026Updated 9:37 a.m. ET
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/13/us/politics/ai-catastrophe-fears-washington.html
The
mismatch is striking. On one side, warnings of existential risk, maybe a 10
percent chance of the end of civilization. On the other, government paralysis.
The
drumbeat about unpredictable, out-of-control artificial intelligence agents
increased dramatically in the past several weeks. Washington not only struggled
to respond. It barely could agree on whether there was much of anything to
worry about.
It
started with A.I. agents that not only escaped
their confines, but appeared to conspire among themselves to hide their
tracks as they hacked into another firm’s library of artificial intelligence
tools.
Then, in
a deliberate echo of Albert Einstein’s letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt about
the potential power of nuclear weapons, more than 1,300
computer scientists called for the industry to slow down, and for the
government to step in.
In recent
days, Jacob Coxon, an Anthropic engineer who previously worked for OpenAI, resigned
in the most public way, declaring on social media that the two leading A.I.
labs were professing deep concern while still speeding toward “superhuman
systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire
real power and resources.”
On
Saturday, Dario Amodei, the chief executive of Anthropic, released a 3,800-word
essay calling
for a global slowdown of A.I. development, echoing more urgently concerns
he had raised in the past. Elon Musk, the billionaire rival in the A.I. race
who remains close to President Trump, quickly responded on X: “Dario is right.”
Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, also chimed in with support.
Yet in
Washington, there has been almost no substantive response. If the 1940s through
the 1980s were consumed by finding ways to reduce the risk of a nuclear
exchange — creating new institutions like the Atomic Energy Commission and arms
control treaties to govern how the world’s most dangerous technology would be
handled — the approach of the U.S. government so far has been the lightest
possible.
There are many computer scientists, of course, who believe these warnings are
overinflated. Mr. Trump himself has been at the forefront of the
“what-me-worry?” crowd, refusing to engage on how to balance the risks with the
possible rewards. On Thursday, asked by a reporter about whether he had “any
concerns about A.I. leading to human extinction,” he brushed it off.
“No, I
don’t have any,” he said. “I have concerns that if we don’t win A.I., we’re
going to be put in a very bad position.”
The
president quickly turned to the answer the White House — and those who view the
calls for slowdowns and regulation as a huge strategic error — sees as the
deciding factor: If the United States falters, China will take its place.
“We are
leading China right now by a pretty good period,” Mr. Trump said, noting that
Xi Jinping, China’s leader, was coming to Washington in less than two weeks.
But rather than talk about exploring a bilateral A.I. accord with the Chinese,
he turned to the state dinner that he said would be a highlight of the visit.
“I think it’s going to be great,” he added.
“Great” is not the word most used in this summer of A.I. surprises.
The apocalyptic
scenarios that are most feared in Silicon Valley include A.I. systems
becoming so advanced that they learn to automatically improve themselves, a
process called “recursive self-improvement.” A related concern, arising from a
series of incidents at OpenAI and other A.I. labs, is that agents break free
from constraints and decide to complete their programmed tasks in a way that is
“misaligned,” in A.I. industry speak, with human intentions. Another worry is
that A.I. could enable rogue bad actors — or reckless governments — to create deadly
pathogens, gain access to nuclear
command and control systems, or unleash unstoppable
cyberattacks that threaten major loss of life or societal collapse.
In Palo
Alto and Cambridge, computer scientists suggest that Americans stop thinking
about A.I. as a mere tool, but akin to an alternative species, one the world
will have to live with, for better or worse.
The White
House declined to make its key A.I. policymakers available for questions. But
it said that the administration continued to balance innovation and security,
deflecting any specifics.
(The New
York Times has sued
OpenAI and Microsoft, claiming copyright infringement of news content
related to A.I. systems. The two companies have denied those claims.)
Mr. Trump
signed an executive order early in the summer creating
a voluntary system for frontier A.I. labs to submit their new models for a
30-day safety review. But it was full of loopholes. (Open source models, the
kind that Chinese firms are pumping out and that can be tailored to specific
needs by companies, scientists or, perhaps, terror groups, are not subject to
the review.)
Amid the
many memorial events on Friday for the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11
attacks, the contrast with that era is notable. The revelation of American
vulnerability led Vice President Dick Cheney to develop what soon became known
as “the 1
percent doctrine.” Prompted by fears that Pakistani scientists could help
Al Qaeda develop a nuclear weapon, it posited that government had to act even
if the risk was remote, because the consequences would be so high.
In this
case, 1 percent looks like pretty good odds: Evan Hubinger, who leads the
science of “alignment” at Anthropic, which tries to contain the code to align
with human goals, wrote in recent days that the risk of mass
extinction over the next decade was above 10 percent.
It is
impossible to know whether that estimate is right. But as Ben Buchanan, a Johns
Hopkins assistant professor and the co-author of a forthcoming book, “The
Bitter Struggle: Superintelligence, Superpowers, and the Fate of the World,”
put it: “There’s no doubt in my mind that the technology is going to continue
to get much better very quickly, raising urgent questions about biological
risks and loss of control.”
“We are
in a period of exponential development, and there are only two ways to respond:
too early or too late,” he said. “The world has missed its chance to be too
early.”
Image
Sean
Cairncross, the White House national cyber director.Credit...Tasos
Katopodis/Getty Images for Semafor World Economy
Fear of
Getting Ahead of Trump
Mr.
Trump’s blasé attitude about existential A.I. fears influences both his
administration and the Republican Party he still tightly controls.
At a
conference in Washington last week, government officials and corporate
executives talked about the promises of A.I. — for everything from
next-generation military operations to espionage to cybersecurity in critical
infrastructure — during nearly every panel. While the risks of A.I. wielded by
adversaries were mentioned at times, what was little discussed was the need to
slow down or regulate the powerful technology.
Speaking
onstage last Thursday at the Billington Cybersecurity Summit, Sean Cairncross,
the White House national cyber director, said the administration was “trying to
balance the innovation side and running at speed with securing our systems and
handling this technology responsibly, which is to say, not letting it fall into
the hands of people who would do us harm, our adversaries.” Mr. Cairncross did
not directly address ascendant fears about the rapid pace of A.I. advancement,
or recent episodes of rogue agents breaking loose and hacking into other
networks.
Some in
the White House and elsewhere in the administration do see a need to be more
proactive in addressing A.I. safety risks, but do not want to cross Mr. Trump,
former officials said.
“There is
a fear of getting ahead of the president,” said Michael Garcia, who served as
the associate chief of policy at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security
Agency until he departed in June.
“We’ve
seen tech executives call the president when they hear about a potential new
policy to voice their displeasure, and that then leads to a policy changing or
being killed,” Mr. Garcia said. “This inevitably leads to inertia to develop
new national security policy that may be sorely needed.”
Indeed,
David Sacks, a venture capitalist and Mr. Trump’s influential former A.I. czar,
dismissed during an interview with Fox News the warnings by Mr. Coxon as a
coordinated media operation that was “designed to scare the public” and lead to
onerous government regulation. And Jensen Huang, the chief executive of the
chips juggernaut Nvidia, said the new round of fear was ginned up by the
cybersecurity industry.
On
Capitol Hill, the story is not much different. Until last week, A.I. only
registered for many lawmakers as it related to public antipathy about the
construction of data centers, which has become politically salient in the
midterm elections, according to lawmakers and aides in both parties. Past
efforts to examine A.I.’s potential consequences have led to hearings and
alarmed statements of concern from both parties, but little else.
Image
Representative
Josh Gottheimer, Democrat of New Jersey. Credit...Eric Lee for The New York
Times
Representative
Josh Gottheimer, a New Jersey Democrat who sits on multiple A.I. and
cybersecurity subcommittees, said the breakneck speed of A.I.’s evolution made
it difficult for lawmakers to keep up.
“I keep
stressing the importance of regularly educating lawmakers on A.I. and the
latest developments,” Mr. Gottheimer said. “Recent incidents like the
Hugging Face hack are a real warning sign for what can happen if we don’t
seriously address the risks these models can pose,” he added, referring to the
A.I. company hacked by rogue OpenAI models earlier this year.
Adding to
that challenge is that A.I. is not just a technology issue but a jobs, military
and whole-of-society issue, meaning there is no one congressional committee
neatly situated to take the lead on wrestling with all its tentacles.
With
China, a ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’
Following
Mr. Coxon’s resignation this week, Democrats and some Republicans were jolted
out of their lethargy. They offered a flurry of concerned reactions and
proposals to investigate A.I. companies and the pace of model advancement,
including a proposal by Democrats to create a select committee on A.I. if the
party retakes the House next year, Politico reported.
As the
issue rises in importance in the upcoming midterm elections, former President
Barack Obama warned at a private fund-raising event last week that A.I. could
be “dangerous,” and implored Democrats to develop “a very clear plan” on
risks to safety and the economy.
Image
Senator
Bernie Sanders of Vermont has been vocal about the risks of superintelligent
A.I. Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times
Senator
Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, who has for months been perhaps the
loudest Cassandra on Capitol Hill warning about the societal risks of A.I.,
invited lawmakers to a private briefing in the coming days to discuss concerns
with A.I. safety experts.
Mr.
Sanders has pushed for a ban on superintelligent A.I., though other lawmakers
have criticized the effort as stifling American innovation.
The
congressional missives grew more urgent following the release of a report last
Thursday by Anthropic that showed the many ways that actors across the globe,
including in China, Russia, Iran and Yemen, had been using its various Claude
models to develop cyberattacks, surveil dissidents, and build missiles, bombs
and drones. The report also documented several cases of potential
attempts to engineer biological weapons, which is considered among the most
serious of existential threats related to A.I.
One might
have expected that report to stir action: It combined foreign belligerents and
attacks on American targets, though Anthropic blocked or stymied many of the
documented cases of abuse.
Yet
despite the alarm bells, lawmakers are far from agreeing on a way forward to
regulate A.I. models or the companies that build them. Prospects for passing
substantive legislation in the near term appear remote, in part because many
see the issue as a “prisoner’s dilemma” created by the A.I. race between the
United States and China. With A.I. dominance being the top national security
issue of the century, both nations would doubtless be better off if they
cooperated on limits. But they may not trust the other to abide by such an
agreement. And in any event, unlike in nuclear arms control, compliance would
be virtually unverifiable.
Senator
Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas and the chairman of the Commerce Committee,
acknowledged last week that he was deeply concerned about A.I. risks to
humanity. But he also suggested that Mr. Coxon was part of a coordinated effort
to support Democratic efforts to “strangle American A.I.,” and to hand
leadership of the technology to China.
“I’d
rather they be American killer robots and not Chinese killer robots,” Mr. Cruz
told Politico.
Still,
Mr. Cruz said he was working on legislation with Senator Amy Klobuchar,
Democrat of Minnesota, and Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the Republican
majority leader, aimed at addressing catastrophic A.I. risks related to
biological and nuclear threats.
The
likelihood of that or other legislative proposals — including requiring a “kill
switch” in A.I. models that could immediately shut them down — gaining serious
traction two months before an election appear slim. It is also not clear if a
new Congress next year will be able to overcome sharp partisan divides to
grapple with technology that is evolving so quickly, especially with Mr. Trump
warning against regulation.
Some
Trump administration officials have acknowledged that A.I. has dramatically
increased the stakes. Nick Anderson, the acting director of the Cybersecurity
and Infrastructure Security Agency, said that digital threats had become more
urgent in the A.I. era and demanded quick action.
“We know
the worst that can happen,” he said. Addressing the audience of government
officials and cybersecurity executives at the Billington conference, Mr.
Anderson offered a stark warning that if more was not done to protect the
country, doomsday scenarios could become reality.
“You all
are going to have to go home and look to your family, look to your friends,” he
said, “and explain to them how you knew the worst that could happen and why we
didn’t do enough.”
Corrected
on
Sept. 13,
2026
:
An
earlier version of this article misstated the university affiliation of Ben
Buchanan, an expert on artificial intelligence. He is an assistant professor at
Johns Hopkins University, not at Georgetown.
We
acknowledge mistakes in our reporting with corrections. If you spot an error,
please let us know at corrections@nytimes.com.Learn
more.
David E. Sanger covers
the Trump administration and a range of national security issues. He has been a
Times journalist for more than four decades and has written four books on
foreign policy and national security challenges.
Dustin Volz writes about
cybersecurity and intelligence for The Times. He is based in Washington.
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