Gottheimer readies AI bill to vet powerful AI models for risk

Ah, marvellous. Another bill, another press release, another heroic legislator riding to the rescue three years after the horse has bolted, been cloned, and started its own hedge fund. Rep. Josh Gottheimer is preparing to introduce legislation requiring some AI companies to submit 'powerful new models' to the government for screening against national security, cybersecurity, and bioterror risks. Because nothing says 'decisive action' like a vague mandate that defines 'powerful' as 'whatever we feel like at the time' and offers no penalty for non-compliance that anyone outside a subcommittee has heard of. The bill, dated June 17, 2026, arrives in a world where frontier models are already capable of tasks that would have been science fiction last Congress — cloning voices, generating disinformation campaigns, and designing novel proteins with bioweapon potential.

The bill, which may or may not get a hearing before the next election cycle, essentially asks AI labs to voluntarily show their homework to a government that still can't decide whether to ban TikTok or buy it. Gottheimer wants to screen for bioterror risks — as if the people building models that can design novel proteins have been waiting patiently for a congressional letter before deciding whether to publish their findings. The cybersecurity and national security risks are equally well-addressed by a system that moves at the speed of a House subcommittee while AI development moves at the speed of inference. Unsurprisingly, the bill contains no enforcement mechanism, because that would require actually funding an agency capable of doing the vetting. Meanwhile, the White House's own AI risk assessment from earlier this year sits on a shelf, gathering dust like a forgotten prop from a West Wing episode.

Of course, the bill only applies to 'powerful' models, leaving the definition to future rulemaking — which is the legislative equivalent of saying 'we'll address it in the sequel.' Perhaps 'powerful' means 'anything that could scare a senator's constituents' — but that definition changes with the news cycle. Every lab with a compute cluster and a 'move fast' manifesto will continue shipping models that can do everything the bill worries about, just not quite powerful enough to trigger the paperwork. The gap between what this bill might do and what is actually needed isn't a gap — it's the entire Grand Canyon, and we're standing on the wrong rim with a very small parachute. Perhaps Gottheimer should spend less time drafting bills and more time reading the ones that already exist but lack enforcement teeth.