Date saved: 2026-10-20 11:00 (PDT)
Sources: Politico, Transformer, ABC News (AP), CNBC, Axios, Bloomberg Law
Anthropic (one of six companies that signed President Trump's voluntary AI safety accord on September 29), has been circulating its own draft federal AI bill on Capitol Hill, and the leaked text would preempt California's, New York's and Illinois' frontier-AI laws while allowing the third-party evaluators who grade AI labs to certify themselves (Politico reported the draft on October 16). Anthropic's head of federal affairs, Anthony Cimino, said the preemption language was "not precise enough" and would be revised, after the leak, not before (Transformer, October 19).
The only federal body demanding documents did so separately: the Federal Trade Commission sent civil investigative demands of more than 50 pages each to OpenAI and Anthropic on October 14, seeking records on security incidents, safeguards, marketing and privacy policies (Axios, Reuters).
The rules the industry is writing for itself
Under Anthropic's draft, the Commerce Department could not stop a dangerous model on its own: it would have to petition a federal court, which decides "without deference" to Commerce or to evaluators, and which is told to weigh the harm a blocking order would cause the developer, users and the public, but not the harm of letting the model ship (Transformer). Evaluators would face no standards or licensing requirements and could self-certify, a design Charlie Bullock of LawAI says means "auditors will inevitably compete with each other to offer … the least bothersome audits available at the lowest possible price point."
The same draft would bar state legislatures and courts from suspending a model on catastrophic-risk grounds, preempting laws like California's SB 53, New York's RAISE Act and Illinois' SB 315. As writer Zvi Mowshowitz put it, "Anthropic is more afraid that the government might enforce rules against Anthropic, than they are worried about the ability of the government to enforce rules against everyone."
What the accord asked of nobody
The White House accord Trump signed with Google, Anthropic, Meta, OpenAI, XAI and Nvidia runs to 308 words. It says labs should follow safety protocols, set up internal teams to monitor their own progress and work with "an independent external auditor or evaluator." It carries no enforcement mechanism, and the White House did not answer AP's questions about how implementation would be monitored. The same day, Trump signed Executive Order 14434, which renames "artificial intelligence" as "Super Intelligence" and creates no new regulatory framework (Inside Global Tech, Faegre Drinker).
Inside the companies, the people doing the safety work are being removed. OpenAI fired three researchers who posted that "fear and unclear rules stymie AI safety work," saying they violated policies on handling sensitive information. Two of them, Mikita Balesni and Tomek Korbak, say they believe they were dismissed over how they communicated with third-party evaluators. "I worry the pervading fear to speak up and engage with third parties will mean OpenAI will cut corners on safety behind closed doors," Balesni wrote (CNBC, October 11).
What the official story leaves out
"Independent evaluation" is being financed by the companies being evaluated. METR raised roughly $71 million in commitments over six months, against $13.6 million in all of 2024, and employs fewer than 50 full-time staff (CNBC). Anthropic funds Accenture's embedded evaluators directly and concedes there is "no settled system for funding independent evaluation." Fathom CEO Andrew Freedman warns that without government licensing, evaluators become beholden for revenue and "start rubber-stamping stuff." None of that appears in a 308-word accord.
The federal vacuum is deliberate policy, not an accident. Attorney General Todd Blanche has said DOJ will not impose new regulatory burdens on the industry through standalone enforcement actions, while the department's AI Litigation Task Force exists to challenge state AI laws (Bloomberg Law). The states filling that gap are the ones this bill would preempt.
Meanwhile the displacement is on the record in the industry's own words: employers cited AI in 120,136 announced US job cuts through September 2026 (about 21% of the year's 573,195 total (Challenger, Gray & Christmas, September 2026 report). In September alone AI was the fifth-most-cited reason for cuts, with 3,961) roughly 9% of that month's total. Both numbers reflect the reasons employers give, not an independent measure of what replaced whom, and both are being read by everyone still employed.
What readers can do
- Ask your two senators and your representative one question: do you support preemption of state AI laws in any federal AI bill? Preemption is the provision that decides whether your state's rules survive.
- If you live in California, New York, Illinois or Connecticut, use the laws that already exist: report AI harms to your state attorney general. California's Transparency in Frontier AI Act carries penalties up to $1 million per violation; New York's RAISE Act requires critical safety incidents be reported within 72 hours.
- Report the harm directly to the FTC at reportfraud.ftc.gov, the agency's subpoenas name consumer protection, and complaints become evidence.
- If your employer cites AI in a layoff, get that stated reason in writing before signing anything; it affects unemployment eligibility, and Challenger's count shows the phrase is being used widely.
Source links
- Politico - Anthropic's leaked AI safety bill
- Transformer - Anthropic's weak AI bill undermines its 'safety first' approach
- ABC News / AP - In Silicon Valley, AI founders cheer Trump's calls for the industry to police itself on safety
- CNBC - AI's quiet safety gatekeepers are stepping into the spotlight
- Axios - FTC subpoenas OpenAI, Anthropic over consumer harms
- Reuters - US FTC subpoenas OpenAI and Anthropic over consumer harms
- Inside Global Tech - U.S. Tech Legislative & Regulatory Update, Q3 2026
- Bloomberg Law - DOJ's Retreat on AI Enforcement Puts Focus on State Regulators
- Challenger, Gray & Christmas - September 2026 Challenger Report