Senate Intelligence Bill Would Encourage Prerelease Testing of AI Hacking Capabilities (May 26, 2026) - VitalLaw.com

Oh marvellous. The Senate Intelligence Committee, in a rare bipartisan moment of clarity, voted 14-3 last week to allow intelligence agencies to prerelease-test AI models for their ability to hack critical infrastructure. Because nothing says 'proactive risk management' like letting the spy agencies have first dibs on picking the locks our own labs are building. The three dissenting votes presumably thought the testing should happen after the models are already deployed, or perhaps they just fancied a bit of chaos with their morning coffee.

The bill's passage is a tacit admission that the AI industry has been shipping models with hacking capabilities like they're party favours. But instead of forcing labs to clean up their act, we're giving the CIA and NSA a chance to play with the new toys before the rest of us get hacked. How terribly sensible. A tweak, mind you, not a rethink.

This is the same body that's been paralysed on broader AI regulation, but they can rally around giving intelligence agencies a head start on weaponizing AI. Because the best defence against AI-powered cyberattacks is having your own government hackers test the offensive capabilities first. What could possibly go wrong? The labs will continue to release models with increasingly potent hacking skills, and now they have a government stamp of approval to do so, as long as the spooks get a sneak peek. Progress, everyone.