Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) speak before a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing on artificial intelligence at the US Capitol, in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, July 25, 2023. The two senators are among those sponsoring the GUARD Act. (Graeme Sloan/Sipa via AP Images)

AI Is Not Social Media. New Child Safety Laws Should Reflect That.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen speaks during a report on children's safety online at EU headquarters in Brussels, Monday, July 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Marius Burgelman)

Does the EU's Special Panel Succeed in Charting a Third Path for Child Safety?

Earth movers prepare a site for a 2.5 million square foot AI data center Tuesday, March 24, 2026, in Independence, Mo. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

Big Tech’s PR Playbook for Overcoming Data Center Opponents

OpenAI founder and CEO Sam Altman is seen with aides in an elevator after a meeting with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on Capitol Hill on July 29, 2026. (Francis Chung/POLITICO via AP Images)

July 2026 US Tech Policy Roundup

Google CEO Sundar Pichai talks before a dinner with President Donald Trump and Japan's Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi in the State Dining Room of the White House, Thursday, March 19, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Google's AI Governance Plan Draws the Boundaries of What Counts as Harm

A view of the Berlaymont European Commission building in Brussels, Belgium on July 20, 2026. (Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via AP)

EU AI Act Transparency Rules Are Now In Effect. Was It A Missed Opportunity?

June 6, 2026: Protesters and officers with the Department of Homeland Security clashed outside the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles on the first anniversary of increased US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids across Los Angeles County. (Photo by Ted Soqui/Sipa via AP Images)

As Google Scrubs ICE Detention Reviews, Platform Power Serves State Interests

Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs Helen McEntee delivers a speech at Dublin Castle in Dublin, during the opening ceremony of Ireland's EU presidency on Wednesday July 1, 2026. (Niall Carson IRISH Press Association via AP Images)

The Irish Presidency of the Council of the European Union Should Welcome Scrutiny from Academia

Illustration of a Tamagotchi with the OpenAI logo depicted on its screen. Tech Policy Press/Shutterstock

Illustration of a Tamagotchi with the OpenAI logo depicted on its screen. Tech Policy Press/

When Users Say 'Goodbye' to AI

A group of people walking around at the National Conference of State Legislatures. 

The 2026 National Conference of State Legislatures in Chicago. Photo by Justin Hendrix.

At NCSL, Geoffrey Hinton Warns State Lawmakers Not to Buy Big Tech's Anti-Regulation Pitch

UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham speaking during a visit to a family center in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, on Friday, July 31, 2026. (Annabel Lee-Ellis/PA Wire POLITICS)

Taking Stock of the UK Tech Policy 'Muddle'

Screenshot from a Google announcement depicting its launch of a Nano Banana 2 feature in Google Earth. 

Google Earth AI Fiasco Underscores Why Tech Firms Must Listen to Outside Experts

Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani and Chief Technology Officer and Office of Technology & Innovation (OTI) Commissioner Lisa Gelobter announced the launch of "Public Interest Technology (PIT) Crew," a new initiative to deploy teams of technologists alongside City agencies to tackle public problems with in-house digital solutions at Coney Island in New York City on July 13, 2026. Credit: Katie Godowski/MediaPunch /IPX

Cities and States Can Replicate NYC’s Ambitious Public Interest Tech Crew

This image is a collage with a colourful Japanese vintage landscape showing a mountain, hills, flowers and other plants and a small stream. There are 3 large black data servers placed in the bottom half of the image, with a cloud of black smoke emitting from them, partly obscuring the scenery.

Deborah Lupton, "Servers in a Landscape" / 

Is Open-Source AI Really the Dangerous Path?

Telegram on App Store displayed on a phone screen and French flag displayed on a screen in the background are seen this illustration photo taken in Krakow, Poland on December 3, 2023. 

(Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via AP)

What a Growing Telegram Disinformation Network Reveals About the DSA

A woman waves a European Union flag in the wind.

The ‘Sovereignty’ Narratives That Don’t Help Europe

Kherson, Ukraine—Lenka Klicperova, journalist and photographer, covers the war in Ukraine. October 19, 2022 Jose Hernandez/Shutterstock

Kherson, Ukraine—Lenka Klicperova, journalist and photographer, covers the war in Ukraine. October 19, 2022 Jose Hernandez/

What It Now Takes to Establish a Fact

Editorial collage in black, white, and blue showing a megaphone emerging from a laptop screen and a hand holding a microphone, surrounded by ribbons reading 'NEWS' and scraps of newsprint.

How Cyberattacks Became a Censorship Tool

OpenAI founder and CEO Sam Altman speaks with reporters as he departs a meeting with Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) on Capitol Hill on July 29, 2026. (Francis Chung/POLITICO via AP Images)

The OpenAI–Hugging Face Incident Demands Urgent Congressional Oversight

Nine small images with schematic representations of differently shaped neural networks, a human hand making a different gesture is placed behind each network.

Can AI Agents Be Aligned with Human Rights?

Opposition to data centers is growing across the United States, and, like the 

 before it, the tech industry is pulling from tried-and-tested playbooks to bypass and 

 public opposition. The results of these efforts reveal both the patchy infrastructure for transparency and accountability in the US, as well as the speed and determination with which industry is moving to build these facilities with 

 by other industries to manipulate public opinion have ranged from 

 designed to deflect oil industry accountability for the harmful effects of plastics. 

 and effectively insulate corporate bottom lines from regulatory scrutiny and public accountability.

Up against a similar PR playbook, some residents in affected communities reported feeling like insurgents against both Big Tech and local elected officials. At least some representatives of the tech industry agree: in September 2025, Kevin Nichols, an employee of the advocacy group Earth Charter Indiana, attended the Midwest Data Center Investment Conference and Expo (DICE) in Chicago, where he says he 

 one speaker comparing his experience promoting data centers to counter-insurgency tactics the speaker used during military service in Iraq and Afghanistan, such as “going undercover in bars and churches to gauge a community’s potential for resistance to a data center development.” 

The language of intelligence gathering is apparent in a 

 the number of deals “blocked or delayed” by local opposition, which tells applicants they will “conduct open-source and targeted research in various sources, including social media” as part of an effort to track “political risks emerging from local opposition to data centers.” (A representative from Data Center Watch says that it “does not maintain separate HR or recruiting functions” from 10a Labs, a company that 

 itself as collecting “intelligence” for “AI unicorns, Fortune 10 companies, and US tech leaders.”)

Against this backdrop, Big Tech is spending big money to influence the public conversation. As the 2026 US midterm elections approach, super PACs focused on AI have already 

 more than $50 million on Congressional races. According to Transformer News, by far the largest tranche of this money flows through a group called Leading the Future; its biggest donors are the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, his partner Ben Horowitz, and OpenAI President Greg Brockman and his wife, Anna.

Leading the Future—alongside Build American AI, an 

 PAC—is doing more than making campaign donations. In May, Taylor Lorenz reported for Wired that Build American AI had 

 social media influencers into a pro-data-center campaign that leaned heavily on arguments about an AI race with China. A month later, Lorenz 

 a joint investigation with Tyler Johnston of Model Republic alleging that Build American AI runs multiple fake “sockpuppet” accounts on X. Also in May, Johnston 

 that another Leading the Future affiliated PAC, Think Big, seems to receive a large amount of its social media engagement from what appear to be fake accounts posing as OnlyFans performers.

 that Leading the Future might be connected to what appears to be an AI-generated news site called Acutus; the site repeats talking points often used by Leading the Future and frequently publishes harsh criticism of AI safety advocates. In March, Transformer 

 that Build American AI had spent more than half a million dollars on ads to harvest the contact information of between 500,000 and 1,000,000 supporters on social media—a common astroturf tactic that allows groups to boast about the size of their support base even when that support may be quite shallow.

One noticeable trend has been the data center industry’s adoption of a longstanding marketing tactic: the creation and use of nonprofit front groups. Many of these groups are registered nonprofits who keep their funding, staff, and industry relationships deliberately opaque; while they can sometimes be identified through tax filings like IRS Form 990, their websites often fail to disclose even basic information about their leadership or sources of support.

“Companies' use of third parties like corporate front groups and astroturf campaigns to secretly advance their interests has a long tradition in the US,” said Jocelyn Leitzinger, a researcher who studies activist campaigns and how corporations respond to them. “Over the past century, companies in highly regulated industries such as tobacco, fossil fuels, and pharmaceuticals have used corporate front groups to block or rollback regulations protecting consumers and the natural environment.”

 roughly $700,000 in fiscal year 2024 on mailers, text messages, and other outreach 

 data center development to Virginia residents. According to its Form 990, Virginia Connects is 

 in Richmond and connected to the Data Center Coalition, an industry lobbying group; Josh Levi, the Coalition’s head, is also 

 as Virginia Connects’ principal officer.

 that Texas Connects, a similarly named nonprofit “dedicated to educating Texans about the data center industry,” was also established by the Data Center Coalition. Similar groups, for instance 

 have recently emerged with similar website templates—all linked by the same Google Ads ID, a unique identifier assigned to advertisers.

In a statement to Tech Policy Press, Data Center Coalition president Josh Levi said that America Connects—the umbrella over these similarly named groups—represents a coalition of stakeholders from the data center ecosystem working to educate and engage with communities about the benefits of data centers. The initiative initially launched in Virginia in 2024 and is expanding its education efforts into Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Oregon and other additional states.”

Similar efforts are run by other industry stakeholders. In Virginia’s Fauquier County, for example, a group named 

 promotes data center development as a way of raising tax revenue. In October, the Fauquier Times 

 that the contact listed on Fauquier Forward’s Facebook page is the 

 of Gigaland, a data center development company. Fauquier Forward is active on social media: its 

, for instance, includes dozens of videos, though it has received little engagement.

 in February that an organization called Missourians for Data and Technology Advancement, or 

, published an ad quoting the Jefferson County Executive—but the executive claimed no knowledge of the group, and the ad was purchased by an out-of-state PR firm called Axiom Strategies. A 2025 press release 

 MODATA a “new statewide coalition,” but the group’s website does not list its members.

In a statement to Tech Policy Press, a MODATA spokesman said that “MODATA represents a broad coalition of large and small businesses, organizations, utilities, labor organizations, and developers in Missouri that support responsible data center policies in the state. We track the positive 

 from elected officials and experts on our website as well and amplify those through paid and earned media.”

It is unclear how impactful these organizations have been to date. Chloe Humbert, an activist based in Scranton who has seen ads from Pennsylvania Connects, is skeptical. In a statement to Tech Policy Press, she said, “I have no idea who PA Connects’ ads would even influence. Maybe the politicians?”

Four people stand outside a brick municipal building holding protest signs opposing a data center. One holds a handmade sign reading "Sign Recall Petition," another holds a sign reading "Exercising First Amendment Rights! No Data Center," and two hold printed signs with a red circle-and-slash symbol reading "No Data Center!" and the URL WakeUpJeffco.org. American flags fly on poles in front of the building, and cars are parked nearby under a blue sky.

From left to right, Luck Adams, Victor Dubbs, Rain Dixon, and Steve Carter protest data center development in Festus, Missouri on May 11, 2026. Photo: Sam Totoni

There are signs that Humbert is right. Data center proponents are shifting toward strategies for keeping the public at arm’s length while courting local leaders.

Project Jupiter is a planned hyperscale data center 

 by OpenAI and Oracle in Doña Ana County, New Mexico. Daisy Maldonado, a candidate for the Doña Ana County Commission, said her first clues that a data center was under development came from a man who initially identified himself as a community organizer. Later, she says she learned he worked for a company called 

—one of the companies involved in the development of Project Jupiter. Maldonado said  the man “[recruit[ed] people to speak” positively about the project. Others 

 at County Commission meetings without identifying himself as an employee of BorderPlex Digital Assets. (BorderPlex Digital Assets did not respond to a request for comment.)

Maldonado said that over time, Project Jupiter’s strategy has shifted: engagement with the public moved from public hearings to community forums where corporate officials have more control over the microphone. In the days prior to a county commission 

 to issue bonds for the project, corporate and county representatives held 

“People were incredibly unhappy,” said Maldonado when asked to describe the meetings. Security and law enforcement were present for a contentious conversation with a standing-room-only audience; at the next session, Maldonado said, the audience was asked to write their questions on note cards. After pushback, organizers switched to calling on audience members; Maldonado said members of the community suspected that some participants could be industry plants.

On September 19, 2025, Doña Ana County voted to issue the bonds after an 

 featuring a packed audience and impassioned public comment.

The forum-switching Maldonado described is not limited to New Mexico. In Texas, former State Senate candidate 

 described similar dynamics with “meet-and-greets” which were frustratingly unproductive: “You go in thinking maybe you could say something, or you know, get some information, but you can't,” she said.

 that a group called Elevate New Mexico ran a campaign promoting Project Jupiter through mailers and digital ads. The mailer showed a smiling young woman with dark hair and brown skin, next to the words “A new day for New Mexico.”

A promotional mailer titled "A New Day for New Mexico" promoting Project Jupiter, a proposed technology campus in Doña Ana County. The top section on a purple background reads: "We have the opportunity to reshape our future and transform with Project Jupiter, a new technology campus in Doña Ana County." Three highlighted figures follow — "Our Families: $360 million in direct payments to support our local schools and public services," "Our Water: $50 million investment in improving our community water systems," and "Our Community: Thousands of high-paying careers, prioritizing Doña Ana residents." A "Did You Know?" section on a blue background reads: "An Investment in Our Future — Project Jupiter will build and operate a state-of-the-art microgrid, supplying its own electricity so local homes and businesses keep the power they rely on. This means the project won't make your bills go up or lights go out." The URL ElevateNewMexico.org appears at the bottom. A smiling woman in a yellow top is pictured on the right side.

Flier supporting Project Jupiter mailed to New Mexico residents. Image from Source New Mexico.

Source New Mexico found that the woman is a stock model and that Elevate New Mexico’s mailing address is in Alexandria, Virginia. Critics told reporters it is an example of ‘

,’ a practice through which companies attempt to appropriate the identities of people of color. Companies involved in the project formed LLCs with names like “Green Chile Ventures” and “Acoma”—the latter being the name of a Native American tribe. In response to 

 from that tribe’s governor, Acoma LLC changed its name to Yucca Growth Infrastructure; YUCCA is also the acronym for a New Mexican environmental organization, 

In April, the New Mexico State Ethics Commission 

 a lawsuit against Elevate New Mexico arguing the organization should be forced to register as a lobbyist with the state. Both Source New Mexico’s reporting and the lawsuit note that at least some of Elevate New Mexico’s digital ads were paid for by APCO Worldwide, a public affairs firm that promotes 

Glenn Wikle, a Santa Fe-based environmental activist with 

, a nonprofit network of volunteer working groups, told Tech Policy Press that "APCO has an extraordinary rap sheet when it comes to astroturfing." Linda Edwards, also from Third Act Action Lab, noted that APCO’s previous projects include the 

, an inoffensively named effort created in partnership with Philip Morris in 1993 to discredit research on the dangers of secondhand smoke. "If you go to APCO worldwide’s site, they present themselves as a PR firm that can enhance your reputation. Companies like Philip Morris turn to them for a reason,” Edwards said. (APCO did not respond to a request for comment from Tech Policy Press.)

Taking advantage of tax-desperate municipalities

Locals pushing back against data center development are up against the 

 of tax reforms designed to starve local governments of revenue.

According to the Missouri Municipal League’s 

, “In many of Missouri’s municipalities, annual revenues are never adequate to meet the service needs and demands of citizens.” And Missouri's 

, which required a majority of Missouri counties to put property tax freezes and caps on the ballot last April, 

Local officials often cite the need for revenue when justifying data center projects to public opponents. As Tiffanie Arthur, a candidate for Indiana State Representative in District 63, told Tech Policy Press, before a data center was voted down by the Washington city council, officials asked: “Do you want us to cut the fire department? Do you want us to cut the police department? Which one of these things do you want us to cut, because we don't have the money.”

In Montgomery County, Missouri, where Google’s 2024 $15 billion data center project 

 severe backlash and a Sunshine Law lawsuit from rural residents, 

 the impact on their overall operating budget and local public health services facing tight financial constraints.

Tech industry coalitions are well aware of data center’s allure as the ultimate municipal boon. When the proposed 

 "$50 million in… direct funding for Franklin County schools, police, fire departments, and parks."

, a Washington, D.C.-based trade association with core members and funders including

 to Amazon's $10 billion data center project in Montgomery County, Missouri by arguing that data centers act as reliable corporate citizens "paying local property taxes that fund schools, repair roads and bolster emergency services while easing the burden on everyday homeowners." And the Meta-linked dark money group American Edge has been ramping up the framing of data centers as indispensable fiscal lifelines. In policy briefs focusing on 

, American Edge points to federal and state funding cuts to argue that traditional local tax bases can no longer sustain schools, roads, or public safety. American Edge CEO Doug Kelly 

 the industry's stance by declaring that leaders “should not hastily slam the door shut on the biggest economic opportunity to reach them in a generation.”

Another strategy is emerging in Missouri, where an ad is attempting to harness anti-data center sentiment to create an even more favorable landscape for corporate capital. The 

 encourages voters to “make big tech pay so you don’t have to” by voting for 

, and it is unclear who is behind it: financial disclosures reveal that earlier this year, a PAC campaign committee called Missouri Promise 

 a $1.9 million cash infusion from a Delaware-based non-profit corporation, Missouri Promise Inc., to flood the airwaves with ads supporting 

. Beyond that, a ProPublica investigation 

But Amendment 5, slated for the August 2026 ballot, doesn’t merely cut taxes; it would also structurally rewire public finance by replacing income taxes with sales taxes, thereby increasing local government dependence on revenue sources like hyperscale datacenters.

In Indiana, the 2026 policy statement for 

representing more than 500 of the state’s cities and towns

—highlights the “strict revenue controls” that local governments have contended with for several decades. They identify “...a reluctance to allow locals to have the authority to institute other types of taxes to offset the loss from the property tax caps,” and say that “despite growing demands from the federal and state levels of government and taxpayers for improved services, the state has restricted local government levy growth.”

 operations. In St. Joseph County, where 

 over AWS data center development, Bill Schalliol, the county’s Executive Director of Economic Development, pointed to a negotiated side agreement explicitly designed to bankroll local emergency and municipal services, telling 

, "It'll help parks. It'll help fire departments in the area, it will allow money for road improvements."

Once data center deals arrive, corporate groups such as the Consumer Energy Alliance (CEA) step in to shield tech conglomerates from regulatory accountability. According to the Energy and Policy Institute, a nonprofit watchdog organization, 

 brands itself as “the voice of the energy consumer” but is funded by energy monopolies and operated by a private public relations firm. In Connecticut, CEA has been a key political shield for the data center industry. By rebranding corporate tax preservation and grid-heavy infrastructure development as a win for "working families," as the group did in 

 to the Connecticut General Assembly in February, it attempts to neutralize genuine grassroots pushback. In spring 2026, CEA escalated efforts focused on data center development in states including 

As communities across the country contend with the breakneck pace of data center development and struggle to express themselves through democratic means, they describe a David vs. Goliath battle against corporate interests. As Janice Bacon, of the Indiana group Protect Morgan County, told Tech Policy Press, “Everybody’s always like, ‘well why is our back pushed up against the wall? We have no recourse.’ People are just now realizing that laws have been written to cut the constituency out.”

Arthur told Tech Policy Press that local opposition to the data center transcends political affiliation. “People are waking up to the fact that it's not about right vs left but have's and have not's. They're seeing, 'It's not my neighbor that is ruining my quality of life, it's billionaires who want more and more and more and have no concern about my quality of life,’” she said.

The swell of opposition can be huge. In Henry County, Indiana, Commissioner Steve Dellinger publicly stated that the majority of constituents supported the local data center development. However, documents obtained by the community group No Henry County Data Center 

 that over 80% of the communications he received urged him to vote against it, a figure 

 by County Commissioner Susan Huhn. But despite this overwhelming constituent opposition, Dellinger and Commissioner Joe Wiley voted to approve rezoning for the data center, with Huhn dissenting.

Local disillusionment is deepening. Kiley Blalock, co-founder of No Henry County Data Center, said, "I know we're a constitutional Republic and the point is to uphold democracy. But it sure doesn't feel like democracy at this point… It's not so much leaning towards 'what do the people want?' but 'what do these corporations want?'"

 that ousted four pro-project city council members, an 

, and a successful citizen-led petition drive that certified a recall election for the mayor and remaining officials who ultimately 

After a Festus City Council Meeting on the evening of May 11th, Air Force veteran Victor Dubbs sat on the sidewalk outside City Hall in a folding chair with a “No Data Center” sign. “We’re not against progress. We want a word. We want them to involve us in the process. They work for us,” he told Tech Policy Press.

Rachel Lau and Shirley Frame work with leading public interest foundations and nonprofits on technology policy issues at 

. Justin Hendrix is editor of Tech Policy Press, and Ashley Faler is assistant editor.

 on Anthropic’s Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models, ending a standoff that had rippling effects on the politics of AI in Washington and around the world. July saw a flurry of new reports, announcements, and events that continued to put questions around AI and security at the fore.

New revelations about security risks from frontier systems bolstered the running debate over the best path forward. Details related to 

 of a sandboxed unreleased OpenAI agent into the platform Hugging Face and 

 that its models hacked three companies during cybersecurity tests after a “misunderstanding” with one of its testing partners left the evaluation environment connected to the internet during testing.

Amid these events, federal AI policy response took place piecemeal across the regulatory ecosystem. On July 14, the White House 

 the creation of “Gold Eagle,” a clearinghouse for coordination on AI-discovered cybersecurity issues, and on July 17 Bloomberg reported that the Trump administration is 

 launching a new watchdog agency to vet frontier models modeled on the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). Lawmakers in both chambers introduced legislation that would go further, proposing pre-deployment testing requirements and a mandated ability to shut the most powerful systems down.

Read on to learn more about July developments in US tech policy.

AI security continues to dominate the tech policy conversation

Throughout July, the White House continued to develop AI regulation. On July 1, the Financial Times 

 that the White House was in “advanced talks” with frontier AI firms about voluntary safety and security standards for new model releases following the Trump administration’s June executive order. On July 17, Bloomberg 

 that the Trump administration is considering developing “an independent regulator to vet the safety of artificial intelligence models with industry input.” And on July 27, The Information 

 that the White House had shared the draft standards framework required under the executive order with the frontier labs, which were in the process of providing feedback. No draft of the standards was publicly available by month’s end.

However, as the federal standards process advanced largely out of view, headlines were dominated by an unprecedented AI-driven cybersecurity incident. During evaluation, an OpenAI agent 

, including one advanced internal prototype, to escape an evaluation sandbox and intrude into multiple external systems, including at the AI software platform Hugging Face. Hugging Face 

 the intrusion on July 16, before it knew that OpenAI 

, noting it had “intentionally not enabled” safeguards during the evaluation. On July 27, Hugging Face released a “

 that the agent also compromised the client of another tech firm, Modal.

Congress introduced multiple bills addressing frontier AI security. On July 21, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) introduced the Secure AI Development Act of 2026, which Axios 

 “would establish a testing framework for frontier AI models before deployment and create a voluntary AI safety incident reporting system.” And on July 23, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and Rep. Nathaniel Moran (R-Texas) 

 the AI Kill Switch Act intended to “require developers of the most powerful AI systems to maintain the technical capability to throttle, suspend, or shut them down.”

Industry and advocacy groups also pushed for regulation to mitigate emerging AI concerns. On July 27, a consortium of companies including Nvidia, Microsoft, Palantir, Hugging Face, Mozilla and others 

 the Open Secure AI Alliance, pledging to “build and share open tools that promote responsible use of and trust in AI.” On July 28, a group of more than 1,000 employees of firms including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Meta 

 suggesting “industry, government, and society at large may need the option to buy time to address emerging risks, develop security measures, and strengthen oversight.” And on July 31, a group of watchdog organizations and tech accountability experts 

 calling for Congress to investigate the OpenAI-Hugging Face incident.

The US Is About to Design an AI Regulator. Here’s How to Get It Right.

” Vinh Nguyen and Elham Tabassi, Council on Foreign Relations.

The AI That Hacked Its Way Out and the Hype That Followed It.

Advanced AI Is Ultrahazardous. Let’s Treat It That Way.

Tech TidBits & Bytes aims to provide short updates on tech policy happenings across the White House, agencies, Congress, civil society, industry, and courts.

 an AI cybersecurity clearinghouse led by the Treasury Department, with contributions from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Pentagon. Gold Eagle seeks to support federal agencies, critical infrastructure owners and operators, and AI companies to find and fix software vulnerabilities discovered by advanced AI models. The initiative fulfills a requirement of President Donald Trump’s 

June 2 executive order on frontier AI and national security

 as director of the Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI) after three months on the job. During his short tenure, Fall oversaw CAISI’s partnerships with leading AI developers to evaluate frontier AI models for safety, 

 with Anthropic about restoring access to its models after Commerce imposed export controls. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Director Arvind Raman will serve as acting director and lead the search for a permanent replacement.

 to the Genesis Mission, an initiative led by the Department of Energy to use AI to advance scientific research. It has selected 278 projects for funding spanning biomedical research, grid reliability, national security, quantum computing, microelectronics manufacturing, and more. The effort follows a broader push, outlined in a 

, to redirect federal science funding toward AI-driven work and individual researchers.

 warning that companies designing AI chatbots to produce “ideological objectives” or avoid discriminatory outputs could violate the FTC Act’s ban on unfair or deceptive practices. As one example, the agency suggested that Colorado’s AI anti-discrimination law, which targets bias in employment and other high-stakes decisions, might expose a company to federal liability.

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee, 

 seeking public feedback on how AI is used across the financial marketplace and where gaps exist in existing federal law, including on model risk management, data privacy, and liability for AI-driven errors affecting consumers. Waters tied the effort to the administration's rescission of guidance affirming that federal law applies to AI decision-making and its attempts to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

passed its version of the FY2027 National Defense Authorization Act

) by a 216-212 vote, carrying several AI measures within the roughly $1.15 trillion bill. One provision directs the Pentagon to update its autonomous-weapons directive to preserve human command responsibility over AI-driven use of force. Another provision would create a Department-wide AI incident and vulnerability reporting program with whistleblower protections. Several additional provisions target adversary AI, including tracking Chinese AI capabilities and assessing espionage risks to military AI data centers.

More than 20 companies, including A16z, Dell, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Palantir, 

 urging the Trump administration to preserve access to open-weight AI models, arguing that restrictions would consolidate power among a few developers and harm small businesses that rely on lower-cost Chinese models specifically. Anthropic 

, with CEO Dario Amodei underscoring that the company does not endorse a categorical ban on open-weight models but supports curtailing China's chip access, responding to distillation attempts, and mandating safety testing of all “sufficiently capable” open and closed models.

 with CrowdStrike, Microsoft, SpaceX, Hugging Face and others, 

 of Hugging Face by OpenAI models that was contained using the Chinese open-weight model GLM 5.2 as evidence that defenders need open tools. On Capitol Hill on July 28, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang 

 for open-weight models in meetings with Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

More than 1,100 researchers and executives from Anthropic, Google, Meta and OpenAI 

 urging the US government to back an international effort to build tools to "deliberately pace the frontier of automated AI development." The petition did not call for a pause, but asked governments to preserve the option to “buy time to address emerging risks, develop security measures, and strengthen oversight” if systems become too powerful to manage safely. The statement drew signatories from companies that are otherwise direct competitors and ran counter to the Trump administration's posture of accelerating AI development to outpace China.

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