Politicians and public officials

Andy Ogles

U.S. representative from Tennessee, chair of the House Homeland Security cybersecurity subcommittee

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Portrait source: Library of Congress, Public domain

Records

Until recently, finding a serious unknown flaw in widely used software took skilled researchers months of painstaking work. Frontier AI models are collapsing that timeline. We now have models that can discover and exploit previously unknown vulnerabilities on their own, at machine speed, across the systems that run nearly everything in our economy.

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Andy Ogles

U.S. representative from Tennessee, chair of the House Homeland Security cybersecurity subcommittee

In a prepared opening statement at a June 2026 House Homeland Security subcommittee hearing, Andy Ogles said frontier AI models can now discover and exploit previously unknown software vulnerabilities on their own, and that without the right safeguards the same models can help a bad actor work through the hardest steps of building a biological weapon.

U.S. Representative from Tennessee and Chairman of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure ProtectionJune 4, 2026Prepared opening statement for the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection hearing, “The AI Security Landscape”

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To understand why that matters, consider what these models can now do. Until recently, finding a serious unknown flaw in widely used software took skilled researchers months of painstaking work. Frontier AI models are collapsing that timeline. We now have models that can discover and exploit previously unknown vulnerabilities on their own, at machine speed, across the systems that run nearly everything in our economy. The most advanced of these models was judged too dangerous to release publicly, so it was shared with roughly fifty large companies to help them find and fix flaws before our adversaries could. In the right hands, that is a powerful defensive advantage. In the wrong hands, it is a weapon. Imagine a Chinese state cyber actor, the kind already burrowing into our power grid and our water systems, armed with a model that finds and exploits unknown flaws faster than any human team alive. The danger does not stop at cyberattacks. The same models that hunt for software flaws can, without the right safeguards, help a bad actor work through the hardest steps of building a biological weapon. Our leading laboratories build in guardrails to refuse that kind of help, but when a foreign adversary copies an American model, strips those safeguards out, and releases it to the world, those protections vanish. We could find that we have handed the most dangerous knowledge on earth to the people most determined to use it, with the safety switches turned off. There is a second front that deserves the same attention. The United States leads the world in the most advanced frontier models, and those models are largely closed, proprietary, and expensive. China has taken the opposite path.

What this quote does not say

The statement does not name the frontier model judged too dangerous for public release or identify the source of the roughly-fifty-company figure.

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There is a second front that deserves the same attention. The United States leads the world in the most advanced frontier models, and those models are largely closed, proprietary, and expensive. China has taken the opposite path. Chinese labs are releasing open-weight models that anyone can download for free, that run at a fraction of the cost, and that are now good enough for most of what an ordinary developer or business needs to do. Here is what concerns me.

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Andy Ogles

U.S. representative from Tennessee, chair of the House Homeland Security cybersecurity subcommittee

In a prepared opening statement at a June 2026 House Homeland Security subcommittee hearing, Andy Ogles said the United States needs capable American models, especially open-weight models that others can deploy and adapt, as an alternative to Chinese open-weight models that he said carry embedded censorship, uncertain security, and stripped safety guardrails.

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Surrounding words

We could find that we have handed the most dangerous knowledge on earth to the people most determined to use it, with the safety switches turned off. There is a second front that deserves the same attention. The United States leads the world in the most advanced frontier models, and those models are largely closed, proprietary, and expensive. China has taken the opposite path. Chinese labs are releasing open-weight models that anyone can download for free, that run at a fraction of the cost, and that are now good enough for most of what an ordinary developer or business needs to do. Here is what concerns me. When the cheap, capable, easy option for an AI model is Chinese, the rest of the world will build on it. Developers and companies in the United States, in Europe, in South America, in Asia, and across Africa are making that choice right now. If we do nothing, Chinese models become the default foundation of the global digital economy, carrying embedded censorship, uncertain security, and capabilities distilled from our own laboratories with the safety guardrails stripped out. We cannot let the world grow dependent on Chinese AI the way it grew dependent on other Chinese technologies we are now scrambling to address. The United States needs a serious strategy to ensure capable American models, especially open-weight models that developers, companies, and governments can deploy and adapt, are a real alternative. Finally, I want to name the issues practitioners care about, because getting them right is how we secure the country.

What this quote does not say

This is not a later-dated walk-back; it appears later in the same June 4 prepared statement and qualifies the scope of Ogles's concern.
The passage does not specify what safeguards American open-weight alternatives should retain or how they would remain effective after release.

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Quote located in the captured page; spacing normalised for display.

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On Tuesday, President Trump signed an executive order directing the Secretaries of the Treasury, Homeland Security, and War to develop a classified benchmarking process for advanced AI cyber capabilities and to design a voluntary framework for early government access to covered frontier models. The President is right to act. These models are already reshaping the threat landscape, and the federal government cannot be the last to understand what they can do.

Exact quote, beginning

Andy Ogles

U.S. representative from Tennessee, chair of the House Homeland Security cybersecurity subcommittee

In a prepared opening statement at a June 2026 House Homeland Security subcommittee hearing, Andy Ogles said President Trump was right to order a classified benchmarking process for advanced AI cyber capabilities and a voluntary framework for early government access to frontier models, and that his subcommittee will watch how CISA carries out that framework.

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Surrounding words

… held roundtables, hearings, and briefings with the leading AI laboratories and cyber companies in the country, and we have opened a joint investigation with the Select Committee on China into the proliferation of Chinese AI models. On Tuesday, President Trump signed an executive order directing the Secretaries of the Treasury, Homeland Security, and War to develop a classified benchmarking process for advanced AI cyber capabilities and to design a voluntary framework for early government access to covered frontier models. The President is right to act. These models are already reshaping the threat landscape, and the federal government cannot be the last to understand what they can do. I want to be clear that this Subcommittee intends to watch closely how CISA carries out its responsibilities under that framework. CISA has statutory authorities under the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015, operates the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog, and serves as the lead civilian agency for critical infrastructure cybersecurity. How CISA fulfills its role under this order, especially in translating early model access into practical guidance and vulnerability remediation for critical infrastructure operators, will be a central oversight question for this Subcommittee in the months ahead. To understand why that matters, consider what these models can now do. Until recently, finding a serious unknown flaw in widely used software took skilled researchers months of painstaking work.

What this quote does not say

The prepared-versus-delivered limitation applies here as well.

How this was checked

Quote located in the captured page; spacing normalised for display.

Reviewed by

an AI reviewer that read the whole source · an automatic character-by-character check