A Warning for Frontier AI Model Governance

Frontier artificial intelligence (AI) model governance has arrived on Capitol Hill. Reps. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and Nathaniel Moran’s (R-Texas) AI Kill Switch Act would empower the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security to slow or halt frontier models. Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) introduced a different "kill switch" bill, placing such power in the hands of private actors. Reps. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.) and Lori Trahan’s (D-Mass.) FRONTIER Act would vest regulatory authority in the Department of Commerce and independent auditors, arguing that AI governance should not be “buried inside the national security apparatus.”

We applaud the governance momentum that is gathering. This problem deserves an all-hands response, one that considers cybersecurity and national security risks as well as the future of labor and access to knowledge. But Congress and other actors face a temptation with AI regulation, one that has often arisen in technologically complex, national security-adjacent situations: cybersecuritization.

Cybersecurity Mission Creep

In a new article in the University of Illinois Law Review, “Cybersecurity Mission Creep,” one of the authors, Mailyn Fidler, lays out what cybersecuritization is and how it works. When cybersecuritization happens, policymakers flatten complex issues into only two of their dimensions: technical complexity and danger to a public interest. Instead of accessing the full range of policymaking tools to address these complicated issues, policymakers resort first to blunt, emergency procedures that focus on the “tech-threat” dimensions of the issue.