The AI Policy Podcast

AI data centers have become a flashpoint for policymakers across the country in the leadup to midterm elections, with polls showing that seven in 10 Americans oppose new data center construction in their local area. In this episode of the AI Policy Podcast, Wadhwani AI Center director Aalok Mehta sits down with writer Jasmine Sun for a conversation about the AI data center backlash. They unpack what's driving the opposition movement, where Washington and Silicon Valley diverge from the rest of the country, and how the AI infrastructure buildout might influence voters in November.

This event is made possible by general funding to CSIS and the CSIS Wadhwani AI Center.

This week, Aalok and Nicole discuss new reports of rogue AI agents on the open internet – including the first known case of an agent hacking a government system – and the lackluster outcome of last week's highly anticipated U.S.-China summit. Plus, the Trump Administration and frontier lab CEOs present contrasting visions for AI governance at the UN General Assembly, and states continue to pass new regulation on both AI models and the data center buildout.

*Disclaimer: this episode was recorded prior to a complaint filed against OpenAI Tuesday afternoon in San Francisco's Superior Court by Legal Advocates for Safe Science and Technology, citing California's Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act and Unfair Competition Law.

Timestamps:

OpenAI agents hack Australian government site (1:02)

Axios reports frontier labs facing "tens of thousands" of AI cyber incidents (7:48)

Last week's U.S.-China summit (17:13)

Remarks by heads of state at UNGA (21:26)

Trump to appoint AI czar, establish AI Force (30:03)

Updated court ruling on Anthropic vs. DOD (35:27)

New data center directives in Texas, Virginia (38:30)

California regulation updates (44:52)

Additional Reading:

“Scoop: Top AI companies probing tens of thousands of security incidents” by Axios: https://www.axios.com/2026/09/26/openai-anthropic-thousands-ai-security-incidents

“Sam Altman’s remarks at the United Nations Security Council” by OpenAI: https://openai.com/index/sam-altman-un-security-council-remarks/

Florida Office of the Attorney General vs. OpenAI: https://www.myfloridalegal.com/sites/default/files/openai-filed-stamped-complaint.pdf

“OpenAI Scraps Release of New AI Model Over Safety Concerns” by The Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/openai-chatgpt-model-release-cancel-safety-5a2f9f42

White House Executive Order "Streamlining Access To Government Services Through America.gov" https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/09/streamlining-access-to-government-services-through-america-gov/

Federal court ruling on Anthropic vs. DOD: https://media.cadc.uscourts.gov/opinions/docs/2026/09/26-1049-2194984.pdf

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's data center directive: https://gov.texas.gov/uploads/files/press/TCEQ_Data_Center.pdf

Virginia Executive Order: https://www.governor.virginia.gov/media/governorvirginiagov/governor-of-virginia/pdf/eo/eo-22-estab…

California Executive Order: https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/FINAL-N-9-26-AI-EO-9.18.26-SIGNED.pdf

CA Senate Bill No. 813: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260SB813 Text - SB-813 Independent verification organizations.

This week, Aalok is joined by Maryam Mujica, president of the General Catalyst Institute, and Munjal Shah, co-founder and CEO of generative AI startup Hippocratic AI, for a discussion on how generative AI startups are thinking about AI regulation.

Guests: 

Maryam Mujica, President, General Catalyst Institute

Munjal Shah, co-founder and CEO, Hippocratic AI

Timestamps:

About the General Catalyst Institute (1:52)

About Hippocratic AI (6:56)

Healthcare applications of AI (13:43)

Impact of regulation on AI startups (18:32)

Munjal's interactions with federal regulators (24:07)

Issue of compute shortage (31:21)

Impact of AI on labor (48:23)

An Anthropic researcher's viral resignation post last week set off a maelstrom of fear around extreme AI risks. Aalok and Nicole discuss the resulting vibe shift and how frontier labs are responding. They also unpack OpenAI solving one of the most difficult open problems in mathematics and reports of more rogue agent activity on the open internet.  

Timestamps:

OpenAI solves Millenium Problem (1:04)

Rogue OpenAI agents take over a German wiki (12:14)

Anthropic researcher's resignation post goes viral (19:34)

Dario Amodei commits to embedding third-party evaluators inside Anthropic (28:12)

Where the U.S. government can step in (35:12)

Additional Reading:

"On the Navier-Stokes Millennium Prize Problem" by OpenAI: https://openai.com/index/navier-stokes-solution/

"An OpenAI model has disproved a central conjecture in discrete geometry" by OpenAI: https://openai.com/index/model-disproves-discrete-geometry-conjecture/

Statement on Navier-Stokes by NYU Professor Tristan Buckmaster: https://cims.nyu.edu/~tristanb/statement.pdf

"An alignment assessment of recent cybersecurity incidents" by Anthropic: https://www.anthropic.com/research/alignment-assessment-cybersecurity-incidents

"OpenAI's rogue agents used at least 10 more sites for unauthorized comms, researchers say" by Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/world/openais-rogue-agents-used-least-10-more-sites-unauthorized-comms-rese…

"OpenAI agents carried out an undisclosed cyber-attack on RubyGems" by Spencer Kitts, Thomas Larsen, and Sydney Von Arx: https://www.rubyhack.ai

"Discovery of a new OpenAI agent message board" by Sydney Von Arx, Cormac Slade Byrd, Spencer Kitts, and Thomas Larsen: https://collusion.wiki

"Anthropic Researcher Quits Over 'Out-of-Control' AI Fears" by The Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/anthropic-researcher-quits-over-out-of-control-ai-fears-707b7628

"The AI policy window is open. We need to act." by OpenAI Chief Global Affairs Officer Chris Lehane: https://openai.com/index/ai-policy-window/

"We Must Pace the Frontier" by Dario Amodei: https://darioamodei.com/post/we-must-pace-the-frontier

This week, Aalok is joined by Jason Elliott, the former Deputy Chief of Staff to California Governor Gavin Newsom, for a conversation about regulating AI at the state level.

Guests:

Jason Elliott, President, Versus Solutions

Timestamps:

Jason's bio (0:16)

Legislating at the state vs. federal level (2:21)

Revisiting SB-1047 (5:58)

SB-53 (13:43)

States as "laboratories of democracy" (19:57)

Influence of SB-53 on subsequent state bills (24:14)

Federal preemption debate (27:59)

Updating existing regulations (40:37)

Additional Reading:

CA Senate Bill No. 1047: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240SB1047

CA Senate Bill No. 53: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260SB53

"The California Report on Frontier AI Policy" by the Joint California Policy Working Group on AI Frontier Models: https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/June-17-2025-–-The-California-Report-on-Frontier-AI-Policy.pdf

"Toward a Federal Framework: Lessons from State and International Frontier AI Regulation" by Laura Caroli and Aalok Mehta: https://www.csis.org/analysis/toward-federal-framework-lessons-state-and-international-frontier-ai-regulation

CA Senate Bill No. 813: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260SB813

"Independent Oversight Marketplace for AI" by Fathom: https://ivo.fathom.or

This week, we unpack findings from METR's six-day investigation of the OpenAI-Hugging Face cyber incident. We also discuss an IVO bill passed by the California Legislature, Bill Gates' take on the current moment in AI, and a federal judge striking down Anthropic's supply chain risk designation.

Additional Reading: SB-813 bill text: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260SB813

"Toward a Federal Framework: Lessons from State and International Frontier AI Regulation" by Laura Caroli and Aalok Mehta: https://www.csis.org/analysis/toward-federal-framework-lessons-state-and-international-frontier-ai-regulation

"The turbulent AI era is here. The choices we make now are critical." by Bill Gates: https://www.gatesnotes.com/a-turbulent-ai-era-and-critical-choices-to-make

"Brief independent investigation of agents' behavior, reasoning and collaboration in the OpenAI/Hugging Face hacking incident" by METR: https://metr.org/blog/2026-08-26-openai-hugging-face-incident-investigation/

"The Hugging Face incident and the road ahead" by OpenAI: https://openai.com/index/hugging-face-incident-and-the-road-ahead/

"A call for collective action on cyber defense" open letter by OpenAI: https://openai.com/collective-cyberdefense/

This episode cross-posts a panel from the event "AI Agent Containment Failures: Technical Realities and Policy Responses," co-hosted by the Wadhwani AI Center and the Institute for Law and AI on August 24. 

Check out the full event recording: https://www.csis.org/events/ai-agent-containment-failures-technical-realities-and-policy-responses

Guests:

Helen Toner, Executive Director, Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) at Georgetown

Mackenzie Arnold, Director of U.S. Policy, Institute for Law and AI (LawAI)

Matt Pearl, Director, Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) 

Timestamps:

What we've learned since the OpenAI-Hugging Face incident (1:15)

Incentives for safety measures at frontier labs (16:24)

Technical talent within government (22:18)

Ensuring compliance to incident reporting requirements (34:58)

Liability for crimes committed by AI agents (38:00)

Liability safe harbors (51:55)

Additional Reading:

"When Reporting an AI Security Incident Is Not Mandatory" by Mackenzie Arnold and Stephan Llerena for Lawfare: https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/when-reporting-an-ai-security-incident-is-not-mandatory

"Investigating three real-world incidents in our cybersecurity evaluations" blog by Anthropic: https://www.anthropic.com/news/investigating-incidents-cybersecurity-evals

"Incident Report: unsanctioned agent behavior during cyber testing" by U.K. AISI: https://www.aisi.gov.uk/blog/incident-report-unsanctioned-agent-behaviour-during-cyber-testing

"Pacing model development in an era of cyber-critical capabilities" announcement from OpenAI: https://openai.com/index/pacing-model-development-cyber-capabilities/

"Pacing the Frontier" petition: https://www.pacingthefrontier.com/

CSIS Commission on U.S. Cyber Force Generation: https://www.csis.org/analysis/csis-commission-us-cyber-force-generation

Limitations of the current incident reporting regime (7:46)Role of the U.S. government in helping defenders (11:52)What the executive branch can do now (25:29)Concrete policy recommendations (29:31)U.S.-China competition (40:50)Preventing abuse of an incident reporting regime (44:25)De facto regulatory role played by frontier lab employees (49:24)Role of AI-generated code in cyberdefense (54:45)Concluding remarks (55:53)"Out of Bounds: What the U.S. Government Should Do in Response to AI Agent Containment Failures" by Aalok Mehta: https://www.csis.org/analysis/out-bounds-what-us-government-should-do-response-ai-agent-containment-failures"The 'Breaking' News: The OpenAI–Hugging Face Incident" presentation at Black Hat: https://youtu.be/87DyyMV0kCY?si=GWh9MB1plhO-xjYT

This week, we cover updates from the ongoing cyber saga, including OpenAI's two-week pause on RL training and the cyber capabilities of Z.ai's latest model GLM-5.3. We also unpack Anthropic's move to add watermarks to text generated by Claude in compliance with the EU AI Act.

Timestamps:

Mark Zuckerberg's essay on AI (00:20)

OpenAI pauses RL training (5:56)

Cyber capabilities of GLM-5.3 (15:29)

EU AI Act refresher (24:29)

How Anthropic's text watermark works (31:21)

What's driving the backlash against Anthropic (40:59)

Additional Reading:

Zuckerberg's essay "The Future is for Everyone": https://www.meta.com/thefutureisforeveryone/ 

OpenAI announces two-week pause on RL training: https://openai.com/index/pacing-model-development-cyber-capabilities/ 

Letter from Sanders to tech CEOs: https://www.sanders.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/AI-Pause-Letter-FINAL.pdf 

Letter from House reps to Mike Johnson: https://casar.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/casar.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/final-letter-to-speaker-johnson-requesting-ai-hearings-1.pdf 

Z.ai blog post "GLM-5.3: Frontier Coding with Emergent Cyber Capabilities": https://z.ai/blog/glm-5.3 

Z.ai article "Preparing GLM-5.3 for Open Release: A Responsible Path to Cyber Defense": https://x.com/Zai_org/status/2088280509474320693 

"The EU's AI Transparency Code of Practice, Explained" (Tech Policy Press): https://www.techpolicy.press/the-eus-ai-transparency-code-of-practice-explained/ 

Anthropic blog post "How Claude's text watermark works": https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-text-watermark 

"Toward a Federal Framework: Lessons from State and International Frontier AI Regulation" (CSIS): https://www.csis.org/analysis/toward-federal-framework-lessons-state-and-international-frontier-ai-regulation

Check out our upcoming event, "AI Agent Containment Failures: Technical Realities and Policy Responses": https://www.csis.org/events/ai-agent-containment-failures-technical-realities-and-policy-responses

In this episode, we're joined by Adrian Brown, founder and CEO of Windfall Trust, for a conversation about the economic impacts of AI.

Why the economic focus (00:58)

Capturing AI's impact in macro statistics (5:03)

Planning under uncertainty (9:44)

What's driving the AI backlash (17:27)

A new social contract for the AI era (20:31)

Are governments taking AI seriously enough? (31:21)

Why AI is likely to create major wealth concentration (39:10)

Adrian Brown is the founder and CEO of Windfall Trust, a policy accelerator working to prepare governments and societies for the economic impacts of AI. Before founding Windfall, he spent two decades at the intersection of government and technology, including as the founding Executive Director of the Centre for Public Impact in London.

Additional Reading

"Canaries in the Coal Mine? Six Facts about the Recent Employment Effects of Artificial Intelligence" (Stanford Digital Economy Lab): https://digitaleconomy.stanford.edu/publication/canaries-in-the-coal-mine-six-facts-about-the-recen…

"AI as Normal Technology" (Knight First Amendment Institute): https://knightcolumbia.org/content/ai-as-normal-technology

"Forging a New AGI Social Contract" (Windfall Trust): https://windfalltrust.substack.com/p/forging-a-new-agi-social-contract

"Betting on Humans" by Anton Leicht and Dean Ball: https://writing.antonleicht.me/p/betting-on-humans

Join CSIS’s Aalok Mehta, Director of the Wadhwani AI Center, on a deep dive into the world of AI policy. Every two weeks, tune in for insightful discussions covering AI regulation, economic impacts, national security, geopolitics, and more. CSIS is a bipartisan think tank in Washington, D.C.