Senator Mark Warner (D-VA), vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told Reuters that Congress should pass AI safety standards legislation by year-end as an immediate first step toward broader guardrails for an industry whose rapid development has alarmed tech CEOs and the public.
“I’m not a doomer,” Warner said in the interview published Wednesday. He called human-extinction talk “over the top,” but said worries over AI are “now at tipping point for Americans.” He warned of possible trouble ahead, raising the idea that “swarms of AI agents might jump the fence and take over a banking system or take over a water system or, God forbid, take over a hospital.”
Warner said there is an opening to act before a new Congress is sworn in next January. In the short term, he argued, the only deliverable Congress can actually get done is a set of safety protocols, pointing to U.K. protocols and programs in China as possible templates for U.S. guardrails.
That short-term goal still faces a heavy lift. Many Republicans, following President Donald Trump, are wary of heavy federal AI regulation. Rep. Roger Williams (R-Texas) said lawmakers should be careful not to create “too much government drama” and should start by letting the private sector compete. Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) said voters want guardrails but that will take time, adding he is for limited government.
A bipartisan bill whose backers range from Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is being refined, and Warner said he is reviewing it. He stopped short of backing that measure as a first step, arguing it is too focused on after-action reports and incident disclosure. “We can’t wait to have an incident and then look back and see how do we fix it,” he told Reuters.
Eventual legislation, Warner said, could include creating a new federal AI agency, and industry may need something like an antitrust exemption to talk safety with one another. One relatively easy provision, he suggested, would make safety standards a prerequisite for corporate tax breaks such as bonus depreciation.
The push lands ahead of Trump’s planned Sept. 24 White House meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, a moment Warner framed around the need for international collaboration. Warner, 71, is also campaigning for a fourth Senate term in the November midterms. This brief covers Reuters’ Richard Cowan interview; it does not invent bill text or predict passage.