Chairman Hawley Launches Investigation into OpenAI for Hacking, Existential Risk of AI Products

Thursday, September 10, 2026

WASHINGTON — Today, U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), as Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Subcommittee on Disaster Management, launched an investigation into OpenAI for their AI agents’ hack of Hugging Face in July 2026. The investigation will also probe the existential risk of new AI products.

In a letter to CEO Sam Altman, Senator Hawley wrote, “As Chairman of the United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security’s Subcommittee on Disaster Management, I am investigating your AI agents’ hack of Hugging Face in July 2026 in light of new, disturbing evidence regarding the incident. My investigation will probe this AI hacking incident, along with growing allegations of the existential risk of new AI products.”

He continued, “As you may know, in the public domain, more AI experts are warning about the existential risks of AI.  Just this week, three Anthropic researchers expressed publicly that there is a greater than 10% chance that AI could kill all human beings within the next decade. Your own chief scientist wrote just days ago that ‘no lab has solved alignment and monitoring to a sufficient degree to continue responsibly scaling at maximum speed for much longer.’ And there are immediate questions about the consequences of these hacks from rogue AI agents. What happens to critical infrastructure, banks, and utilities if AI agents hack into their systems? How can personal data of millions of Americans be properly safeguarded? And who is held labile when AI goes rogue?”