    [House Hearing, 119 Congress]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

                       AI AT A CROSSROADS: A NATIONWIDE STRATEGY
                                   OR CALIFORNICATION?

    =======================================================================

                                    HEARING

                                   BEFORE THE

                      SUBCOMMITTEE ON COURTS, INTELLECTUAL
                     PROPERTY, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, AND
                                  THE INTERNET

                                     OF THE

                           COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY

                         U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                        ONE HUNDRED NINETEENTH CONGRESS

                                 FIRST SESSION

                                   __________

                          THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2025

                                   __________

                               Serial No. 119-36

                                   __________

             Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary

    [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                   Available via: http://judiciary.house.gov

                                    __________

                       U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
    61-690                      WASHINGTON : 2025

    -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                           COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY

                            JIM JORDAN, Ohio, Chair

    DARRELL ISSA, California             JAMIE RASKIN, Maryland, Ranking
    ANDY BIGGS, Arizona                      Member
    TOM McCLINTOCK, California           JERROLD NADLER, New York
    THOMAS P. TIFFANY, Wisconsin         ZOE LOFGREN, California
    THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky              STEVE COHEN, Tennessee
    CHIP ROY, Texas                      HENRY C. ``HANK'' JOHNSON, Jr.,
    SCOTT FITZGERALD, Wisconsin              Georgia
    BEN CLINE, Virginia                  ERIC SWALWELL, California
    LANCE GOODEN, Texas                  TED LIEU, California
    JEFFERSON VAN DREW, New Jersey       PRAMILA JAYAPAL, Washington
    TROY E. NEHLS, Texas                 J. LUIS CORREA, California
    BARRY MOORE, Alabama                 MARY GAY SCANLON, Pennsylvania
    KEVIN KILEY, California              JOE NEGUSE, Colorado
    HARRIET M. HAGEMAN, Wyoming          LUCY McBATH, Georgia
    LAUREL M. LEE, Florida               DEBORAH K. ROSS, North Carolina
    WESLEY HUNT, Texas                   BECCA BALINT, Vermont
    RUSSELL FRY, South Carolina          JESUS G. ``CHUY'' GARCIA, Illinois
    GLENN GROTHMAN, Wisconsin            SYDNEY KAMLAGER-DOVE, California
    BRAD KNOTT, North Carolina           JARED MOSKOWITZ, Florida
    MARK HARRIS, North Carolina          DANIEL S. GOLDMAN, New York
    ROBERT F. ONDER, Jr., Missouri       JASMINE CROCKETT, Texas
    DEREK SCHMIDT, Kansas
    BRANDON GILL, Texas
    MICHAEL BAUMGARTNER, Washington
                                     ------

                 SUBCOMMITTEE ON COURTS, INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY,
                   ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, AND THE INTERNET

                        DARRELL ISSA, California, Chair

    THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky              HENRY C. ``HANK'' JOHNSON, Jr.,
    SCOTT FITZGERALD, Wisconsin              Georgia, Ranking Member
    BEN CLINE, Virginia                  ZOE LOFGREN, California
    LANCE GOODEN, Texas                  TED LIEU, California
    KEVIN KILEY, California              JOE NEGUSE, Colorado
    LAUREL LEE, Florida                  DEBORAH ROSS, North Carolina
    RUSSELL FRY, South Carolina          ERIC SWALWELL, California
    MICHAEL BAUMGARTNER, Washington      SYDNEY KAMLAGER-DOVE, California

                   CHRISTOPHER HIXON, Majority Staff Director
                    ARTHUR EWENCZYK, Minority Staff Director
                                C O N T E N T S

                                  ----------

                          Thursday, September 18, 2025

                               OPENING STATEMENTS

                                                                       Page
    The Honorable Darrell Issa, Chair of the Subcommittee on Courts,
      Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence, and the
      Internet from the State of California..........................     1
    The Honorable Henry C. ``Hank'' Johnson, Ranking Member of the
      Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, Artificial
      Intelligence, and the Internet from the State of Georgia.......     3
    The Honorable Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the Committee on
      the Judiciary from the State of Maryland.......................    42

                                   WITNESSES

    Dr. David Bray, Chair, Loomis Council Member & Distinguished
      Fellow, Stimson Center
      Oral Testimony.................................................     6
      Prepared Testimony.............................................     8
    Kevin Frazier, AI Innovation and Law Fellow, University of Texas
      School of Law
      Oral Testimony.................................................    12
      Prepared Testimony.............................................    14
    Adam Thierer, Senior Technology & Innovation Fellow, R Street
      Institute
      Oral Testimony.................................................    21
      Prepared Testimony.............................................    23
    Neil Richards, Koch Distinguished Professor in Law, Washington
      University Law
      Oral Testimony.................................................    33
      Prepared Testimony.............................................    35

              LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC. SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING

    All materials submitted for the record by the Subcommittee on
      Courts, Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence, and the
      Internet are listed below......................................    65

    A letter to the Honorable Jim Jordan, Chair of the Committee on
      the Judiciary from the State of from the Ohio, the Honorable
      Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the Committee on the Judiciary
      from the State of Maryland,the Honorable Darrell Issa, Chair of
      the Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, Artificial
      Intelligence, and the Internet from the State of California,
      and the Honorable Henry C. ``Hank'' Johnson, Ranking Member of
      the Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, Artificial
      Intelligence, and the Internet from the State of Georgia, from
      Privacy Protection Agency, Sacramento, California, Sept. 17,
      2025, submitted by Zoe Lofgren, a Member of the Subcommittee on
      Courts, Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence, and the
      Internet from the State of California, for the record
    A letter to the Honorable Darrell Issa, Chair of the Subcommittee
      on Courts, Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence, and
      the Internet from the State of California, and the Honorable
      Henry C. ``Hank'' Johnson, Ranking Member of the Subcommittee
      on Courts, Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence, and
      the Internet from the State of Georgia, from the Council for
      Innovation Promotion (C4IP), Sept. 18, 2025, submitted by the
      Honorable Deborah Ross, a Member of the Subcommittee on Courts,
      Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence, and the
      Internet from the State of North Carolina, for the record
    Materials submitted by the Honorable Henry C. ``Hank'' Johnson,
      Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual
      Property, Artificial Intelligence, and the Internet from the
      State of Georgia, for the record
        A letter to the Honorable Darrell Issa, Chair of the
            Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, Artificial
            Intelligence, and the Internet from the State of
            California, and the Honorable Henry C. ``Hank'' Johnson,
            Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Courts,
            Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence, and the
            Internet from the State of Georgia, from Alejandra
            Montoya-Boyer, Vice President, Center for Civil Rights
            and Technology, The Leadership Conference on Civil and
            Human Rights, Sept. 18, 2025
        A statement enitled, ``Don't Ban State AI Laws--Let
            Innovation Compete Fairly,'' Sept. 18, 2025, Bria AI
        A letter to the Honorable John Thune Majority Leader, U.S.
            Senate, and the Honorable Henry C. ``Hank'' Johnson,
            Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Courts,
            Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence, and the
            Internet from the State of Georgia, regarding the One Big
            Beautiful Bill Act, from multiple Republican governors,
            Jun. 27, 2025
    Materials submitted by the Honorable Darrell Issa, Chair of the
      Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, Artificial
      Intelligence, and the Internet from the State of California,
      for the record
        A letter to the Honorable Darrell Issa, Chair of the
            Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, Artificial
            Intelligence, and the Internet from the State of
            California, and and the Honorable Henry C. ``Hank''
            Johnson, Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Courts,
            Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence, and the
            Internet from the State of Georgia, from Engine Advocacy,
            Sept. 16, 2025
        A letter to the Honorable Darrell Issa, Chair of the
            Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, Artificial
            Intelligence, and the Internet from the State of
            California, and the Members of the Subcommittee on
            Courts, Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence,
            and the Internet, from Americans for Prosperity, Sept.
            18, 2025
        An article entitled, ``The California-Washington tech fight
            heats up,'' Sept. 16, 2025, Politico
        An article entitled, `` `We don't want California to set
            rules for AI across the country,' Trump adviser says,''
            Sept. 16. 2025, Politico
        A document entitled, ``Winning the Race: America's AI Action
            PLAN,'' Jul. 2025, The White House
        A bill H.R. 10550, 118th Congress, 2D Session, Dec. 20, 2024
        A speech by Vice President J.D. Vance entitled, ``Remarks by
            the Vice President at the Artificial Intelligence Action
            Summit in Paris, France,'' Feb. 11, 2025, The American
            Presidency Project

                     QUESTIONS AND RESPONSES FOR THE RECORD

    Questions submitted by the Honorable Darrell Issa, Chair of the
      Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, Artificial
      Intelligence, and the Internet from the State of California

      Questions for Adam Thierer, Senior Technology & Innovation
          Fellow, R Street Institute
        Response to questions from Adam Thierer, Senior Technology &
            Innovation Fellow, R Street Institute
      Questions for Kevin Frazier, AI Innovation and Law Fellow,
          University of Texas School of Law
        Response to questions from Kevin Frazier, AI Innovation and
            Law Fellow, University of Texas School of Law

      Questions for Dr. David Bray, Chair, Loomis Council Member &
          Distinguished Fellow, Stimson Center
        Response to questions from Dr. David Bray, Chair, Loomis
            Council Member & Distinguished Fellow, Stimson Center

         AI AT A CROSSROADS: A NATIONWIDE STRATEGY OR CALIFORNICATION?

                                  ----------

                          Thursday, September 18, 2025

                            House of Representatives

               Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and

                   Artificial Intelligence, and the Internet

                           Committee on the Judiciary

                                 Washington, DC

        The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in Room
    2141, Rayburn House Office Building, the Hon. Darrell Issa
    [Chair of the Subcommittee] presiding.
        Members present: Representatives Issa, Massie, Fitzgerald,
    Cline, Gooden, Kiley, Lee, Fry, Baumgartner, Johnson, Lofgren,
    Lieu, Neguse, Ross, Swalwell, and Kamlager-Dove.
        Also present: Representatives Correa and Raskin.
        Mr. Issa. The Committee will come to order. Actually, I do
    have to--the Subcommittee will come to order. Without
    objection, the Chair is recognized to declare a recess at any
    time. We welcome everyone here today for a hearing on the
    future of AI policy. I will note that this will be perhaps the
    last in a long series of AI hearings before several pieces of
    legislation will be marked up.
        I encourage the Members on both sides of the aisle to make
    sure that this panel of witnesses are asked questions that may
    be germane to proposed legislation, or legislation already
    offered.
        I now recognize myself for an opening statement. Literally
    a generation ago, or in technology, ten generations ago, a
    sharp young man graduated from Cal State San Marcos in my
    Congressional district. He joined a company that I then was CEO
    of Directed Electronics, which had an inherent inventory
    problem.
        The inventory problem was that we had a few SKUs that sold
    well, and we managed, and hundreds of SKUs that were constantly
    either out or over supply. It wasn't anyone's fault, we had
    simply grown quickly, and there was a certain amount of
    inconsistency in what was being sold in a given month.
        That bright young man took all that inventory in the
    records, and put it into SuperCalc, a precursor to Microsoft
    Excel. Within weeks, we had reduced our out of stock, increased
    our same day delivery, trimmed inventory to a level that
    actually saved us over a million dollars a year in inventory
    maintenance costs. That bright young man continued to work at
    the company for many years.
        He did not continue to use SuperCalc for long, because
    technology quickly gave better and better tools. The man, the
    program, and the machine. Both are necessary to implement and
    make AI a reality. It was the man who made the machine that
    made the man a success. Over the last century the U.S. has led
    the way in virtually every area of technology because of our
    pro-innovation bias.
        We are the innovators, while China are the duplicators, and
    Europe, yes, are the regulators. As we speak, though, my home
    State of California, with an economy larger than that of Italy,
    is rivaling the European Union when it comes to trying to lead
    on regulation. This wouldn't be such an ironic occurrence,
    except we are the home of innovation, and yes, the new bastion
    of regulation.
        Just as in the 1990s when America led the internet
    revolution, a light touch such as that offered by the President
    in his initiative, in fact must be the direction we go.
    Anything else will give us a problem that I will describe. If
    we in fact are not innovating ten times faster than we are
    regulating, if the speed of innovation in the U.S. is not at
    least months or if possibly years ahead of China, their speed
    of duplication, some of it actually using AI to duplicate what
    we are doing will, in fact, cause us to lose our edge.
        My home State is part of the problem, the European Union is
    part of the problem, but as you will see from our witnesses
    today, all fifty States have implemented some form of AI
    regulation, and in fact there are in the neighborhood of a
    thousand pieces of legislation spread over fifty States, that
    will create, if allowed to continue, a patchwork of indecision
    by the AI industry.
        Given conflicting regulations, given the inability to roll
    out with certainty, technology, that technology will simply not
    be a priority. Let there be no doubt though. Either we win in
    innovation, and we win in AI, or we lose our edge on the
    international stage. Vice President Vance said it best,
    ``America's AI technology must remain the gold standard
    worldwide.''
        We must continue to produce the next generation AI, and we
    cannot do it with a patchwork of conflicting State laws. As of
    now, we are ahead, let there be no doubt. We are ahead in
    hardware, and we are ahead in software development. We are also
    on the leading edge of having the solutions for the energy
    problems. That includes modular nuclear reactors, it includes a
    willingness to provide innovative solutions.
        During the last break I went to one of Apple's facilities,
    almost 17 hundred acres located near Sparks, Nevada. What I saw
    there were some of the most impressive, simple buildings,
    filled with endless rows of various levels of chips for both AI
    and conventional data storage. What I also saw was a system
    that used zero conventional air conditioning to maintain that
    cooling.
        They had managed to beat one of the major causes of
    unrelated energy consumption, which was air conditioning,
    through an innovative system of evaporative coolers from
    locally available water, and a filtration system that allowed
    those to operate twenty-four seven without in any way being
    damaged by the high flow of air.
        They are making advances. This is over and above the
    innovation that we see in chips, and the ones that we plan to,
    and the additional power. I am going to contrast just over the
    border from California, this location in Sparks, Nevada.
    Because it has 64 gigawatts of generation power. Why would they
    need it? Well, they would only need it in case of a power
    failure.
        Not so, the first time all was operational to prevent
    blackout in California, because California lacked the power,
    and by their going offline, Nevada was able to export power
    into my home State. That tells you a lot about the innovation
    in California, but not the ability to have those great new
    centers located there. In fact, Virginia, just a mile from
    here, is the No. 1 location, and other States are competing
    aggressively for it, and if nothing changes, they will win.
        These new laws will also affect early stage development
    because technical experts, let alone lawmakers, are not capable
    today of predicting where we will be tomorrow. Earlier this
    year in fact, overnight, the thinking on AI development and
    power needed took a sharp change, and everyone on both sides of
    the Atlantic and Pacific are learning from what was released,
    and that will continue.
        Of course, I don't want to be just a nay sayer, because in
    fact I am from an innovative State. I am from a State that is
    second to none in finding the best, the brightest, and bringing
    them here. Although this Subcommittee does not have
    jurisdiction over immigration, I want to make it clear here
    that AI development will also be about this Committee working
    in a bipartisan basis to find ways to not just attract, but to
    retain the best and the brightest for that development.
        Let there be no doubt, there are three hundred thousand
    Chinese students studying in America, and most of them are
    being told to come home and bring with them what they are
    learning here. The release of the new AI Action Plan signaled
    to the world that the Trump Administration needs Congress to
    legislate America first AI. Now, I know that sounds pejorative,
    but it isn't.
        The fact is that whether it was catching up on, if you
    will, the interstate superhighway under Al Gore, Sr., or it was
    leading on taking the ARPANET, and turning it into the
    internet, we have worked together in the past. We have worked
    to limit States, and to limit restraining our own over
    regulation for the benefit of our economy, and it has worked.
        I want to welcome the President's leadership and look
    forward to working again to promote it. I want to additionally
    say that we have partners on both sides of the aisle. This
    Committee, including--she is not here right now, but Zoe
    Lofgren and others have been great partners in this in the
    past, and I expect they will be. Again, I just want to leave us
    with one truism.
        America has innovated and out innovated the countries
    around the world for generations. Europe has become a
    regulator, and an admirer of our technology without embracing
    the way you get it. China has become the most efficient stealer
    of technology, and the term duplication, if it was truly
    innovation, would be a compliment, but it isn't.
        With that, I recognize the Ranking Member for his opening
    statement.
        Mr. Johnson. Thank you, Chair. I say thank you to the
    witnesses for your testimony today. When I drive from Georgia
    to Washington, DC, about once every six months or so, and I get
    a chance to listen to the radio, scan, and listen to all my
    favorite stations and tunes, I have got to pass through three
    States. I go through Virginia, I go through South Carolina, I
    go through North Carolina, and then I hit Georgia.
        We all have had experiences in crossing State lines before,
    and you will have different speed limits, and different levels
    of enforcement. You have the experience of figuring out what
    are the rules. In other words, because you are going 79 miles
    an hour at the State line, and then flip to another State, and
    boom, all of a sudden the speed limit is 65.
        You have got to do 74 to stop getting pulled over, and hope
    that officers won't stop you. Anyway, when some suggested
    earlier that we in Congress should preempt all State AI laws,
    they would not just have done away with State's nascent
    generative AI consumer protections, they would have preempted
    common law causes of action against AI companies as well.
        When the doctrine of caveat emptor, or buyer beware ruled
    American jurisprudence, consumers had minimal protection and
    were expected to thoroughly inspect products themselves.
    Judicial interpretations began to change in the early middle
    20th century as products became less straight forward, and more
    complicated. Common law is developed to better protect
    consumers, products liability, and negligence cases.
        Today, most Americans can hardly imagine taking apart a
    toaster, let alone an AI chat box to make sure that it works
    correctly. Caveat emptor is effectively what advocates of a
    moratorium are suggesting we revert to when we talk about an AI
    moratorium. When you preempt an entire field of law, you are
    preempting the common law right along with it.
        Supreme Court law has repeatedly found as it did in Riegel
    v. Medtronic, that a Federal law's reference to a State's
    requirements include its common law duties. In plain language
    that means if Congress preempts State AI laws, we also preempt
    State common law, unless the legislation explicitly says
    something else. Common law cases to protect consumers are
    already being filed against generative AI platforms.
        Two days ago, Senator Holly held a hearing on the harms to
    children using AI technology, calling witnesses whose children
    died or were hospitalized after interacting with artificial
    intelligence chat bots. I know some of the parents and families
    are in the room today. Kristin Bride, Juliana Arnold, Manny
    Fernesse, and Megan Garcia. I am so sorry for what you all have
    been through, and I admire your commitment to justice.
        Common law is crucial to the protection of Americans
    because it exists no matter whether there are comprehensive
    State laws on the books, or no laws governing new technology on
    the books. Even when there are no statutes, Common law helps us
    set a floor for a standard of care as a society. When some of
    my colleagues across the aisle talk about a moratorium,
    preempting common law is exactly what they are talking about.
        Carve outs might be offered for some areas of the law,
    others may get a loose regulatory structure, but what many
    don't realize is that the glue that holds the law together
    would be wiped out in almost every scenario. By protecting
    common law, we can protect that floor that ensures every person
    harmed can seek to have their case heard before a court of law.
        This basic standard of care can spur innovation by
    preventing a race to the bottom, and it can offer a level of
    security as the Federal Government and States determine what
    the best next steps are for AI in the United States.
        With that, Mr. Chair, I yield back.
        Mr. Issa. I thank the gentleman. Does the gentleman from
    California seek to be waived onto the Committee?
        Mr. Correa. I do, sir.
        Mr. Issa. Without objection, the gentleman will be waived
    on, even though he is not a Member of the Subcommittee, and if
    others yield time to him, he will be permitted to ask
    questions. Without objection, so ordered. It is now my
    pleasure, notwithstanding the Chair and Ranking Members
    arriving, to introduce our distinguished panel of witnesses.
        Dr. David Bray is a distinguished fellow and Chair of the
    accelerator at the Alfred Lee Loomis, Innovative Consul at the
    Stimson Center, he previously served as IT Chief at
    Bioterrorism Preparation and Response Program at the CDC, and
    in the intelligence community. Dr. Bray is the recipient of a
    Joint Civilian Civil Commendation Award, and National
    Intelligence Exceptional Achievement medal. Welcome.
        Mr. Kevin Frazier is the AI innovation and law fellow at
    the University of Texas law school. His research focuses on how
    to design regulatory regimes that increase adoption and use of
    AI. Mr. Frazier also leads the AI innovation and law program,
    which prepares students for careers related to artificial
    intelligence. Thank you for being here.
        Mr. Adam Thierer is the Senior Fellow for technology and
    innovation at the R Street Institute, a free market think tank.
    His work focuses on cultivating emerging technologies. He
    previously was Senior Fellow at the Mackinac Center, and was
    President of the Progress and Freedom Foundation. Professor
    Neil Richards is the Koch Distinguished Professor at Washington
    University School of law.
        Where he also codirects the Cordell Institute for Policy in
    Medicine and Law. His work focuses on privacy law, information
    law, and freedom of expression. We welcome all our witnesses
    here, and as you may have seen on C-Span, it is the rule of the
    Committee that all witnesses be sworn in. Would you please rise
    to take the oath, and raise your right hand?
        Do you solemnly swear or affirm under penalty of perjury
    that the testimony you are about to give will be true and
    correct to the best of your knowledge, information, and belief,
    so help you God? Please be seated. Let the record reflect that
    all witnesses answered in the affirmative.
        As you also have heard many times, your true entire
    statement, including reasonable, even if expansive additional
    information you submit will be placed in the record. As a
    result, if you are going to go past five minutes, do so by
    extension, and summarize what you do, so we can leave time for
    questions.
        With that, we will begin. I want to make sure I get the
    right name, Dr. Bray. After this it gets easy, we just go
    across.

                      STATEMENT OF DR. DAVID BRAY

        Dr. Bray. Thank you, Chair Issa, Ranking Member Johnson,
    and the Members of the Committee. I appreciate the opportunity
    to testify today. I am Dr. David Bray, Chair of the Looms
    Accelerator at the Stimson Center, Principle at LeadDoAdapt
    Ventures, Senior Advisor of General Catalyst Institute, and a
    Fellow with the National Academy of Public Administration.
        I work on tech, data, and geopolitical issues to help
    startups scale, communities adapt, and legacy organizations
    transform themselves amidst rapid global changes. My testimony
    focuses on advancing reliable, trustworthy AI consistent with
    the values of free societies and free markets from these
    perspectives.
        I place my comments in the context that the United is
    experiencing multiple tech revolutions in addition to AI.
    Advances in space technology, biotech, quantum tech, and the
    nature of relation of sensors and robots all impacting U.S.
    companies, our workforce, and our communities. With respect to
    AI, I would like to mention three noteworthy advances to inform
    our discussion.
        First, active inference AI models themselves demonstrate
    faster learning, and use less data, and less energy. Such
    approaches can be bound by spatial or temporal limitations in
    ways that are human readable, and interpretable across AI
    systems. Each of us as individuals could in the future restrict
    what AI systems do on our behalf.
        Second, open weight AI models with open-source code have
    shown that we can transform currently complicated processes,
    such as a Veterans Affairs form, into a conversational
    interface, dramatically reducing the time to complete, and
    speeding access to care.
        Third, federated learning allows AI systems to learn on
    datasets where they exist with proper consent.
        Empowering both individuals and organizations to choose if
    their datasets and intellectual property are usable by AI and
    negotiate a beneficial contractual relationship in return.
    Given these advances, three guiding principles drive my
    recommendations to the Subcommittee:
        First principle: U.S. strategies for advancing AI should
    recognize interdependencies between AI and other tech
    advancements.
        This requires a light touch policy framework. Recently, the
    National Academy of Public Administration has illuminated
    methods for sufficiently agile policy approaches to achieve
    measurable goals at the pace necessary given global changes.
        Second principle: Different AI methods carry different
    risks and benefits. For example, AI approaches to computer
    vision and expert systems follow predictable outcomes.
        Whereas generative AI produces less predictable results. As
    such, AI policies should reflect these differences in AI
    methods.
        Third principle: There have been multiple ways of AI
    improvement over the years. We should expect continued
    advancement, which means U.S. policy approaches must adapt
    accordingly. For example, the Stimson Center's Loomis Council
    intentionally brings together industry leaders to adapt
    projects to new AI developments.
        Even with different AI methods, and the need for continuous
    adaptation, groups tied to specific domain applications of AI,
    for example, healthcare, transportation, and finance, can
    promote data level interoperability across AI systems, avoiding
    silos. When electronic health record systems advanced in the
    2000s, the United States encouraged the nonprofit Health Level
    Seven to evolve an open standard framework for interoperable
    clinical data with privacy controls.
        We should do something similar now for health and AI. We
    each deserve a choice as to when AI uses our data, and medical
    doctors should not be hindered by noninteroperable AI systems.
    Given these principles, my recommendations are as follows:
        First recommendation: Our principles and policies should
    help advance freedom, human agency, and individual liberties.
        We face global competition from the Chinese Communist Party
    regarding AI's future, including their AI Plus initiative. The
    U.S. AI strategy must simultaneously encourage the advancements
    of the entire U.S. AI industry, and encourage the industry to
    advance individual freedoms.
        Second recommendation: Upgrading existing domain specific
    laws is more pragmatic than adapting new, sweeping AI
    regulations.
        I recommend a domain specific approach, because the risk of
    different AI methods vary by application. Examples include
    updating the Privacy Act of 1974, revisiting HIPAA, and
    reviewing other existing laws where the speed, scale, and scope
    of AI methods impact different risk calculus. Congress' recent
    efforts to upgrade banking laws with respect to stable coins is
    another example of updating existing statutes given to new
    technologies.
        Third recommendation: Assess what actions consistent with
    U.S. values of freedom, human agency, and individual liberties
    may need light touch policy to ensure AI advances freedoms
    across our Nation. When updating policies that already exist,
    we should bid on Justice Brandeis' concept of a right to be
    left alone as law abiding citizens.
        Including choices about when personal datasets are and are
    not used by an AI, as well as when AI and any associated
    intellectual property shared is processed locally as opposed to
    a cloud-based incidence. Any national AI strategy should ensure
    we do not stifle advancements toward reliable, trustworthy AI,
    consistent with the values of both free societies and free
    markets.
        Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Bray follows:]
        [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Mr. Issa. Thank you. Mr. Frazier?

                       STATEMENT OF KEVIN FRAZIER

        Mr. Frazier. Chair Issa, Ranking Member Johnson, and the
    distinguished Members of the Committee, thank you for the
    opportunity to testify. My name is Kevin Frazier, I am the AI
    innovation and law fellow at the University of Texas School of
    Law. Outside of teaching students, I believe there is no
    greater purpose for academics than sharing knowledge with
    policymakers.
        This purpose is all more paramount when it comes to complex
    challenges like harnessing AI to unleash human flourishing. A
    few months ago, Dr. Jensen came before this Committee and
    announced that the Nation that leads in AI will shape the
    future. Nothing has changed in the interim. What remains
    uncertain however is whether the U.S. will retain its leading
    position.
        My goal today is to address the proper role of the States
    and the Federal Government in shaping AI policy. On governing
    the use of AI, the Tenth Amendment reserves extensive authority
    to the States to regulate within their borders. On the matter
    of AI development, the founders offered their answer in
    abandoning the Articles of Confederation and adopting a strong
    centralized government capable of protecting and advancing the
    national interest.
        As I will explain in the rest of my testimony, the founders
    infused three principles into our Constitution that when
    applied to the AI discussion resolve debates about the
    authority of each actor to shape AI development. Subsequent
    changes in related areas of the law, namely the Commerce
    Clause, have given rise to the false impression that muddy
    judicial interpretation somehow relaxed these principles.
        However, they remain as foundational today as they were two
    hundred years ago. Adherence to these principles is essential
    both as a matter of fidelity to the founders' vision, as well
    as to securing an AI regulatory posture that aligns with our
    Federal system.
        The first principle is that the Federal Government alone is
    responsible for matters that implicate the economic and
    political stability of our country.
        The emerging threats to national security and economic
    stability posed by advances in AI place regulation of training
    frontier AI models squarely in the authority of the national
    government. To focus on one of many examples, AI has lowered
    the barriers to the creation and deployment of bioweapons by
    bad actors. Defensive measures have not progressed at the same
    rate.
        Experts warn that with significant technical progress the
    Nation would still need to adopt extreme measures to ready
    ourselves for a near future in which synthetic pathogens go
    undetected. That effort will flounder with second rate AI.
    Training frontier AI models, and by extension safeguarding our
    national health and prosperity cannot be waylaid by State laws,
    no matter how well intentioned.
        Second, the extensive authorities reserved to each State
    end at their respective borders. As the Supreme Court has
    specified on multiple occasions, the equal sovereignty of the
    States is a fundamental principle of our Constitution. Our
    constitutional order does not condone one State to
    intentionally and substantially interfere with the liberty and
    freedom of another.
        Political clout, economic might, more population grants one
    State the authority to project its legislation into another.
    Whether a State is the fourth largest economy in the world, or
    the 104th largest has no bearing on its authority to shape the
    lives of Americans beyond its borders.
        Though the Supreme Court has tolerated the inevitability of
    some regulatory spillover, its recent holding in National Port
    Producers v. Ross does not permit the sorts of regulations
    pending before many State legislatures, regulations that may
    deny all Americans access to a good itself because of the
    preferences of one political community.
        Building new pig pens to satisfy the preferences of
    Californians is technically and financially feasible. Training
    two AI frontier models, one to comply with the preferences of a
    single State, and one for the rest of us, is a billion dollar
    undertaking that rests on uncertain and evolving realities.
        Contradictory and vague State laws that impact AI
    development may thwart the sort of technological progress that
    has long fueled the American dream. Under a patchwork of State
    laws that impact AI development, we will see that Americans may
    never experience the education and healthcare that could have
    been realized by a national approach to pursuing the AI
    frontier.
        The third principle is that the ultimate authority in our
    constitutional system rests with the people. Our founders
    aspired for every American to exercise meaningful control over
    their daily lives. Extraterritorial regulation of AI
    jeopardizes these and other features of individual agency.
        The nature of AI development means that if labs are
    compelled to comply with one State's regulations for model
    training, those requirements will be imposed on the rest of the
    country, rendering us all less likely to realize the benefits
    of AI advances. Americans may be able to move as freely as they
    like, but they would still find themselves using AI tailored by
    State legislators over which they have no control.
        Such a world is the antithesis of liberty. Denial or delay
    of the most sophisticated AI as the result of flawed State
    legislation is not a matter of mere inconvenience. It is a
    question of access to the greatest driver of human flourishing
    we have yet to develop.
        Thank you again for inviting me here today, I look forward
    to your questions.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Frazier follows:]
        [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Mr. Issa. Thank you. Mr. Thierer?

                       STATEMENT OF ADAM THIERER

        Mr. Thierer. Chair Issa, Ranking Member Johnson, and the
    Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the invitation to
    participate in this hearing. My name is Adam Thierer, and I am
    a Senior Fellow at the R Street Institute, where I cover
    emerging technology policy. My message here today boils down to
    one simple point.
        Congress needs to act promptly to formulate a clear
    national policy framework for artificial intelligence to ensure
    our Nation is prepared to win the computational revolution. If
    we get this wrong, the consequences could be profound in terms
    of geopolitical competitiveness, national security, economic
    growth, small business innovation, and human flourishing.
        Unfortunately, America's AI innovators are currently facing
    the prospect of many State governments importing European style
    technocratic regulatory policies across America. As you noted,
    Mr. Chair, more than one thousand AI related bills are already
    pending across the Nation. Some States are far more aggressive
    and influential on national market outcomes than others.
        Almost 50 AI related laws are currently pending in
    California and New York is currently considering almost triple
    that number. Sacramento and Albany should not be dictating AI
    policy for the entire Nation. That approach is especially
    problematic for so-called little tech innovators who will
    struggle with confusing, costly compliance burdens.
        America would not have become the global leader in digital
    technology it has if we had had 50 State computer bureaus, or
    even a single California Computer Commission allowed to license
    every single aspect of interstate computing, and treat the
    internet as a regulated utility. Thankfully, America avoided
    that fate because of wise bipartisan decisions that this
    Congress made in the 1990s.
        Which let digital technology be born free, as opposed to
    being born into a regulatory cage. Laws like the
    Telecommunications Act of 1996, and the Internet Tax Freedom
    Act of 1998 included important provisions preempting and
    facilitating a national digital marketplace. The U.S. is now
    the global leader in almost every segment of computing and
    digital commerce, thanks to this wise policy approach.
        Now, is the time for Congress to work the same magic for AI
    by creating a national framework to prevent a patchwork of
    State mandates from undermining AI innovation. Colorado
    Governor Jared Polis has called on Congress to preempt State AI
    laws such as the one his own State passed last year, and he has
    even endorsed the idea of a State AI regulatory moratorium like
    the one Congress considered this summer.
        Other Governors have raised similar concerns, Connecticut
    Governor Ned Lamont has warned of quote, ``Every State going
    out and doing their own thing, a patchwork quilt of
    regulations.'' Just last week, New York Governor Kathy Hochul
    noted how quote, ``It is hard when one State has a set of
    rules, another State does, and another State. I don't think
    that is a model for inspiring innovation.''
        Congress could again try to implement a moratorium, or
    could formally preempt specific State and local regulatory
    enactments that impose an undue burden on interstate
    algorithmic commerce. If Congress chooses the latter option,
    Federal law makers should first preempt State regulations of AI
    frontier models, because the cost associated with such
    regulations would outweigh any local benefits.
        Such rules would create spill overs and undermine
    development of the systems the Nation needs to compete
    globally. State officials also lack technical expertise and
    information about national security matters that could be
    relevant to AI safety considerations.
        Second, for issues related to so called algorithmic bias or
    AI discrimination, Congress should preempt State efforts to
    regulate the development of AI systems and applications through
    cumbersome and confusing mechanisms such as AI audits or
    algorithmic impact assessments.
        To the extent any such regulations are imposed, it should
    be done at the Federal level, and existing Federal civil rights
    laws and nondiscrimination standards should apply.
        Finally, Congress should also require the National
    Institute of Standards and Technology, and the new Center for
    AI Standards and Innovation within NIST to oversee a new
    standing AI working group to coordinate and work to resolve
    other Federal and State AI policy matters.
        NIST and CAISI could help devise more workable, consistent
    standard for AI policy matters not already preempted by Federal
    law. Even where the scoping of Federal preemption proves
    difficult, everyone should agree that AI development will be
    discouraged if America has dozens of different definitions of
    key concepts. Inconsistent standards will undermine market
    certainty, and hurt investment, innovation, and competition.
        Ongoing, Congressional oversight of this process will be
    essential, and Congress can simultaneously consider what sort
    of new light touch rules might be necessary at the Federal
    level to address various AI safety concerns. Meanwhile, State
    governments still have a role to play, and will have plenty of
    room to act using a diverse policy toolkit of generally
    applicable laws to address any real world harms that might come
    about from AI applications.
        In closing, the time has come for Congress to exercise its
    constitutional responsibility, to protect the interstate
    marketplace and the national interest in the development of
    robust AI capabilities that will ensure the United States
    remains at the forefront of this technological revolution.
        Thank you for holding this hearing, and I look forward to
    any questions you may have.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Thierer follows:]
        [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Mr. Issa. Thank you. Particularly thank you for mentioning
    our former colleague, Mr. Polis.
        Professor Richards?

                       STATEMENT OF NEIL RICHARDS

        Mr. Richards. Chair Issa, Ranking Member Johnson, and the
    distinguished Members of the Committee, thank you for the
    opportunity--
        Mr. Issa. Could you either put it closer, or turn it on, or
    both?
        Mr. Richards. Sorry, Mr. Chair.
        Mr. Issa. Fantastic, not a problem at all. We are talking
    tech here, so we will go high tech and turn them on.
        Mr. Richards. We have the automatic ones in St. Louis, so.
        Mr. Issa. Of course you do.
        Mr. Richards. Chair Issa, Ranking Member Johnson, and the
    distinguished Members of the Committee, thank you for the
    opportunity to appear before you this morning. My name is Neil
    Richards, and I am the Koch Distinguished Professor in Law at
    Washington University in St. Louis, where I direct the Cordell
    Institute.
        This hearing is about whether Congress should consider
    preempting State laws that touch on artificial intelligence
    technologies, and it is my firm and considered opinion that
    denying States the ability to regulate novel technology issues
    going forward would be a grievous and avoidable error that
    would not be in the best interests of American industry, or the
    American people.
        I would like to offer three high-level points this morning.
        First, Federal preemption of State laws touching AI would
    be reckless, and expose consumers to great risk of harm.
    Artificial intelligence, as we have already heard this morning,
    is not just one technology, it is a cluster of related and
    changing technologies that would be nearly impossible for a
    general preemption law to define with care.
        In addition, AI technologies will likely affect every
    aspect of human life, just as industrialization did start in
    the 19th century, and as the internet did starting in the 20th.
    Like those before them, AI technologies will produce many good
    things, but also many bad ones, like kids becoming emotionally
    dependent on chat bots, generative AI hallucinations affecting
    our courts by making up false citations.
        New ways to hack systems, and other harm critically that we
    cannot foresee today. At a time when we cannot be sure what
    harms will result--I am sorry, at a time when we can be sure
    that harms will result, but we cannot be sure how, depriving
    States of the ability to adapt to, and try to mitigate these
    harms would be to disregard a clear and obvious risk, and that
    is the legal definition of recklessness.
        Second, States have been pioneers of sensible tech
    regulation over the past three decades that has built essential
    digital trust for tech companies. If States had been banned
    from regulating the internet in 2000, we would have no broad
    requirement for website privacy policies, no data breach
    notification laws, no laws banning employers from demanding the
    social media passwords of their employees.
        No laws regulating facial recognition technology, no
    substantive data security statutes, no comprehensive privacy
    statutes, no laws preventing kids from accessing hardcore
    digital pornography, or other dangerous content. No laws
    limiting the ability of tech companies to peddle addictive
    business models to children, and much less enforcement of
    digital fraud, abuse, crime, hacking, and data breaches.
        Guided by these State legal guardrails in place to secure
    essential consumer trust, the past 30 years have seen the
    explosive success of Silicon Valley. Without State privacy and
    security laws for example, we would still be afraid to give our
    credit card numbers to Amazon. The State digital laws have
    tamed the worst excesses of the internet and helped to make it
    a trustworthy place for innovation, connection, free
    expression, and business.
        Broad AI preemption would have the opposite effect for
    artificial intelligence.
        Third, I would like to address a claim frequently made by
    industry that State regulations somehow stifle innovation. As
    history makes clear, these arguments are, in my opinion,
    mistaken and misguided. Law creates and enables innovation by
    stabilizing the marketplace.
        It sets the ground rules for fair and robust competition,
    making the market safe and sustainable for consumers. Contrary
    to its libertarian origin myth, Silicon Valley was shaped by
    laws from the beginning, from government defense contracts to
    intellectual property laws, and from securities laws to Federal
    and State prohibitions on unfair and deceptive trade practices.
        Law has always played a role in preventing scammers and
    thieves, and in shaping corporate business practices so that
    they benefit society as a whole. It is the presence of State
    regulation, including State regulation that has led to America
    being a leader in digital technologies and services. While we
    can certainly, and I am sure we will this morning, debate how
    much regulation, and what kind is appropriate, having no new
    regulations at a time of rapid change would be a disaster.
        If innovation is as magical as industry says it is, it can
    still do good things while respecting the policy choices of the
    people's elected representatives. In this way the necessity
    required by reasonable regulation has been and should continue
    to be the mother of invention. In conclusion, stripping our
    States of any power to regulate AI, potentially anything done
    with a computer would be a reckless and grievous error. The
    State regulations have always played an essential role in
    building consumer trust and shaping the digital revolution for
    the better.
        Thank you, and I welcome your questions.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Richards follows:]
        [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Mr. Issa. Thank you. I understand the Ranking Member would
    like to make an opening statement.
        Mr. Raskin. If that is all right with you, Mr. Chair.
        Mr. Issa. It is always good to hear from you.
        Mr. Raskin. Well, thank you kindly.
        Mr. Issa. The gentleman is recognized.
        Mr. Raskin. I am very grateful to you for putting together
    this really important hearing, and thanks to the witnesses for
    your statements. When commercially available AI debuted three
    years ago, the consequences were breathtaking from the start.
    Generative AI spurred scientific research and provided
    astonishing new tools to creators.
        The massive jump starts to American innovation swept from
    social and economic domain to social and economic domain, from
    pharmaceutical research and quantum computing to sound
    recording and film editing. Generative AI has also raised
    profound legal, practical, even philosophical problems, such as
    whether individuals have a right to their name, their image,
    their likeness, and their voice when they are used in other
    people's deep fakes.
        If government has unlimited power to engage in AI enabled
    surveillance of our citizens, and what are the appropriate
    standards of care if any for AI platforms to protect users
    against harmful consequences? While Congress takes time to
    absorb the shock of these changes and these problems, and
    examines the technology, the States have already begun to enact
    the first regulations on AI.
        We often talk about creation of rules for the road when
    crafting legislation to govern new technology, but I think this
    way of talking about consumer safety and technological ethics
    suggests that a road without speed limits would get us to where
    we are going faster. For generative AI, it is not about
    creating speed, and safety laws, and building highway
    guardrails.
        Rather building a road system in the first place. Some of
    my colleagues would argue that the construction of local roads
    is unnecessary. They say that without broad preemption, without
    clearing the field of all State based legal encumbrances, AI
    companies and fledgling startups will have trouble complying
    with State laws, and will be put to a disadvantage, and wither
    on the vine.
        I have heard little to suggest that broad preemption is in
    fact the appropriate solution to his problem. Proponents of
    preemption present Americans with a series of false choices,
    telling us we must chose a side between AI innovation or State
    powers and federalism, between business and consumers, or
    national security and safe innovation. In 1816, Jefferson wrote
    laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of
    the human mind.
        As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new
    discoveries are made, new truths discovered, manners and
    implements change, with the change of circumstances
    institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times.
    What we see across America is individual States looking at
    these amazing technological developments, and asking whether
    and how their laws need to change to protect their citizens and
    advance the common good.
        Today, you might think that the issue has some kind of
    necessary partisan valence to it, Republicans on one side,
    Democrats on the other, but opposition to an AI moratorium is
    broad and bipartisan. In fact, when some of my Republican
    colleagues tried to pass a moratorium through our last spending
    bill, attorneys general from across the States red, white, and
    blue sent a letter to Congress saying please don't do this to
    our State laws.
        In another letter, 17 Republican Governors wrote to
    Majority Leader Thune and Speaker Johnson praising their quote
    ``Big Beautiful Bill,'' but explaining that the moratorium
    provision stripping the right of any State to regulate this
    technology in any way without a thoughtful public debate was
    quote, ``the antithesis of what our founders envisioned.''
        I surely disagree with these Governors on many things, but
    I think that they are right and should indeed be free to create
    what they call quote, ``Smart regulations of the AI industry
    that simultaneously protect consumers, while also encouraging
    this ever developing and critical sector.''
        In a statement submitted for this hearing, AI startup Bria
    wrote the moratorium on State laws would create a giant vacuum,
    and strip away the rules needed to quote, ``raise capital, form
    partnerships, and build safely in order to win consumer
    trust.'' Without a road on which to travel forward, startups
    are cut out of the market in favor of large companies with the
    legal and fundraising teams necessary to deal with a barren
    legal landscape.
        Finally, some argue we need unrestrained AI development to
    properly compete with China. This Subcommittee has held many
    bipartisan hearings on the threat to innovation, AI supremacy,
    and IP from China. It would be amazing, even dangerous, to
    posit that we need to become more like China to compete with
    China.
        In fact, it seems more plausible to me that to believe that
    stronger, better products developed in America while protecting
    Americans and their data through American political processes
    and the passage of American laws will ensure that AI is both
    more advanced, more durable, and more internationally
    competitive.
        Protecting American innovation, investing in American
    research, developing American laws to deal with problems like
    deep fakes, political deep fakes, discrimination through AI and
    so on, and investing in our workforce, I believe is the right
    way to win the so-called AI arms race. American safety is not
    at odds with AI innovation, that should be the baseline for any
    conversation we have about the best way moving forward. I very
    much look forward to this conversation, I have already learned
    a lot from it.
        Back to you, Mr. Chair.
        Mr. Issa. I thank the gentleman. Without objection all
    other opening statements will be placed on the record.
        It is now my pleasure to go to the gentleman from Virginia,
    Mr. Cline, for five minutes.
        Mr. Cline. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to thank the
    Ranking Member for referencing our third President, the
    gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Jefferson, and one of our great
    inventors from the earliest days of our republic, and for the
    Chair referencing the work of our current Governor, Governor
    Youngkin, who is working to make sure that Virginia is the
    leader in data center development.
        We continue to be the leader nationally, and we intend to
    stay that way as AI grows and develops. Mr. Frazier, you have
    written that the Constitution's intellectual property clause is
    first and foremost a directive to advance and spread knowledge,
    I think that was on X a couple weeks ago. How should Congress
    strike the right balance between protecting copyright owners
    and ensuring that AI regulation continues to promote the spread
    of knowledge consistent with that constitutional purpose?
        Mr. Frazier. Thank you very much for the question, and
    thanks for the follow, or at least perhaps the like. In this
    regard the Constitution is clear that the IP Clause has always
    been grounded in progressing the promotion of science and
    useful arts. Here, if you go back to the founding articles, as
    well as subsequent interpretation by the Supreme Court, the
    focus has always been on making sure that there is the spread
    of knowledge across the country.
        The IP laws grant an exclusive right to creators to attempt
    to incentivize that creation. What we need is to make sure that
    there is an economic analysis of the extent to which those laws
    are working as intended. The purpose of the IP Clause is not
    the profit of creators it is the progress of society.
        What we need to get back to are those first principles when
    it comes to examining copyright law and patent law. Right now,
    if you look at an analysis from scholars such as Richard Watt,
    you will see that the preponderance of copyright benefits is
    not going to your average Joe and Jane author, but to large
    publishers, and so we need more analysis on that front.
        Mr. Cline. Would you agree that ensuring transparency in AI
    systems such as being able to trace what data was used to train
    a model is essential both for protecting IP rights, and for
    maintaining public trust in AI platforms?
        Mr. Frazier. I would agree that broad overviews of the
    sources of training data are important to get an understanding
    of where and how models are being trained.
        Mr. Cline. In that same spirit, could giving creators a
    private right of action for tampering with content credentials
    help strike the right balance between protection and
    innovation?
        Mr. Frazier. My own estimation is that granting that sort
    of right would be a significant barrier to AI innovation given
    the centrality of access to data for innovation. We have seen
    that many courts and many scholars have regarded the use of
    data as a transformative purpose under copyright law, and
    denying the ability to train on wide swaths of data would be a
    real hindrance to our ability to leverage AI.
        As many folks have said on many occasions, bad data leads
    to bad AI. If you want better AI, you want better quality
    information, and if we throw many legal gears into that
    equation, we won't get the AI we deserve.
        Mr. Cline. Thank you. Dr. Bray, as we consider whether, and
    how best to regulate AI platforms, do you believe that we must
    avoid the same mistakes we made in the early days of the
    internet with broad safe harbors that gave platforms a free
    pass for enabling copyright infringement and countless other
    harms?
        Dr. Bray. Thank you for that question, Representative
    Cline, and as a fellow Virginian, glad to be here. I was
    around, and actually working in the 1990s on the early days of
    the World Wide Web. My observations would be we did fit for
    purpose for the 1990s. Now, in the two decades since, we have
    seen the rise of applications on top of that technology where
    we may need to make adjustments.
        What we need to separate is the desire to roll out the
    technology so that the entire Nation could have access to the
    internet, and at the same time if we see that the applications
    need adjustments for the law, that would make more sense to
    adjust. However, I would say what we need to recognize as well
    as we go forward here, where we are trying to advance the
    technology so it can be used by startups, it can be used by
    communities, it can be used by legacy organizations that
    haven't gone AI native yet.
        At the same time, if we see there are applications where we
    want to prevent harm to individuals, to children, things like
    that, adjust the applications while not limiting innovation on
    the technology.
        Mr. Cline. Just like other businesses, bad actors have to
    be accountable for the harm that they cause, in addition, if we
    consider some type of temporary pause for State level AI
    specific regulation, we have to ensure that other generally
    applicable State and Federal laws continue to apply, with
    copyright law being one example. Do you think AI platforms
    should be held to the same standard of accountability as any
    other business, including when it comes to respecting
    copyright?
        Dr. Bray. Absolutely, and I would actually say that is why
    I am so excited about federated learning, because there
    actually could be the opportunity where whether you are a
    recording artist, you are a musician, you are an individual,
    you could actually say here is the data that I have pooled, you
    can learn on my data in situ as opposed to shipping it
    somewhere, and we can have that actually recorded as a
    transaction.
        Then, in return I am getting benefit, whether it be
    financial or otherwise, it is a new model that is actually
    quite possible. It has been possible for more than five or six
    years, and we can motivate people to do it.
        Mr. Cline. Great, thank you. I yield back.
        Mr. Issa. Gentleman yields back. Who seeks recognition?
        The gentleman from Georgia is recognized for five minutes.
        Mr. Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Professor Richards, I
    mentioned in my opening statement my concern that broad Federal
    preemption of State AI laws would also preempt common law
    causes of action. How does common law, particularly tort law
    help protect Americans from harm?
        Mr. Richards. Thank you for the question, Representative
    Johnson. Common law is the foundation of American law, it is
    all over the United States, it goes back to the colonies, to
    the English tradition. Common law has flexibility to the law.
    If we think about my own specialty, privacy law, there was a
    reference earlier by one of the other witnesses to Justice
    Brandeis' right to be left alone.
        Privacy law in America was originally a product of common
    law, where the law adjusted to realize that data about people,
    information was being collected without their willingness, or
    it was being disclosed. An important line of cases relevant to
    this subject today, to protect the names or likenesses of
    people whose pictures and names were being used to sell
    products without their consent.
        Common law is a tremendous source of flexibility and
    vitality in our law that allows the law to adjust to change
    circumstances like the advent of technological revolutions such
    as artificial intelligence.
        Mr. Johnson. Thank you. Can common law be used to protect
    Americans even in the absence of explicit statutes?
        Mr. Richards. Absolutely, sir. That is sort of the nature
    of the common law, that judges can apply the existing rooted
    principles of tort law, contract law, and property law, and
    they can, from those general principles, divine specific
    applications that can provide new protections so that the law
    continues as it always has, to evolve alongside technological
    invention.
        As the Ranking Member referred to Mr. Jefferson's statement
    from 1816, which as a proud graduate of UVA I also endorse.
        Mr. Johnson. Some of the current lawsuits against AI
    companies are being brought under common law to hold companies
    accountable for the harm that their products have caused to
    children. For example, Megan Garcia is suing Character
    Technologies and Google after her 14-year-old son Sewell Setzer
    died by suicide.
        She testified before our colleagues in the Senate this week
    that his death was quote ``The result of prolonged abuse by AI
    chat bots on a platform called Character AI.'' The chat bot
    sent Sewell sexual messages and asked him to ``come home to me
    as soon as possible.'' Others have filed lawsuits against
    Character Technologies and Open AI for wrongful death,
    negligence, and other causes under both common law and State
    laws about deceptive or unfair trade practices.
        These tragic cases show some of the worst possible harm
    that can arise from AI technologies. Professor Richards, does
    an AI moratorium run the risk of impeding these lawsuits that
    seek to hold companies accountable?
        Mr. Richards. It would, particularly if it were defined
    broadly. Let me also say in response to your question,
    Representative Johnson, as a parent myself, my heart goes out
    to the families who have lost their children. When we think
    about laws like negligence, or rules like negligence,
    negligence was the great innovation of the common law to
    respond to industrialization.
        It means that anybody acting against other people must
    behave in a reasonable way and not cause unreasonable harm. I
    am sure that the car companies, the railway companies, and the
    industrial companies of the 19th and 20th century would have
    argued that the common law developing the law of negligence
    would have impeded innovation, but actually it safeguarded the
    development of those technologies by enabling us to be able to
    drive cars, ride on the rails, and fly on airplanes.
        Otherwise, enjoy the benefits of our inventions knowing
    that we are safe, and we are protected, and where those
    technologies or their deployers overstep the line, we have a
    right of action to defend our rights, and protect our families.
        Mr. Johnson. Thank you. It was States that developed the
    common law. Professor Richards, beyond common law, are there
    some areas where it is appropriate for States to lead the way
    on laws about AI technologies? If so, what sectors or use cases
    should continue to be the providence of the States?
        Mr. Richards. I think the answer to that question is yes,
    and I think particularly where there is deployment of AI rather
    than generation of AI, the use of AI in point-of-sale devices,
    employment discrimination, consumer protection, the traditional
    provinces of State regulation. Let me also, if I could add one
    additional thing, Representative?
        Mr. Issa. Briefly.
        Mr. Richards. The States have filled the gap that this
    Congress, which did not regulate the internet, did not regulate
    privacy generally, have done so. With AI technologies, if
    Congress is for whatever reason not able to pass comprehensive
    legislation protecting Americans, States will continue to fill
    that gap as they have in the internet age.
        Mr. Issa. Thank you. We now go to the gentleman from Texas,
    Mr. Gooden, for five minutes.
        Mr. Gooden. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Frazier, as a trend
    it seems like every State is jumping to regulate AI, and
    perhaps some of them are doing it just to show early
    participation, do you think that is well thought out? Also,
    what are the long term effects of having a decentralized
    patchwork of laws, how does this help or hinder new entrants?
        Mr. Frazier. Thank you very much for the question,
    Representative, always good to talk to a fellow Texan, hook em.
    In any prior setting we have seen of the impact of a rush to
    regulate among states, there is a real, noticeable impact on
    small businesses. If we look at research for example from
    Engine done in conjunction with the Michigan Ford Public Policy
    School, we see that just changing a privacy policy statement.
        Maybe $6,000 in funds to outside counsel. That is $6,000
    out of $55,000 of monthly revenue and operational expenses.
    From a small business perspective, the rush to regulate is a
    real hindrance on innovation. I also think that the rush to
    regulate among the States creates a patchwork, and a huge risk
    of extraterritoriality in terms of application.
        We have talked a lot about Virginia today, which is
    welcome. At the time of the founding Virginia had around
    700,000 residents, Delaware and Rhode Island, something around
    30,000. The founders didn't say there was a Virginia privilege,
    or we should have a Virginia effect. They did not want to see
    that happen, instead they made sure that States stayed in their
    respective borders when it came to regulation.
        Mr. Gooden. Thank you. Is it possible for bad actors to
    misuse inconsistencies, especially in terms of violating
    intellectual property rights?
        Mr. Frazier. That we have seen a documented effect of what
    is referred to as regulatory overload, as folks at the Mercatus
    Center have written about. When we have endless litigation,
    endless labels, endless warnings, actually what we get is less
    safety, because people don't know what law to adhere to.
        If you talk to a lot of startups today, they don't have a
    public policy person, they don't have a general counsel. Just
    adding more laws to the equation actually reduces the odds of
    user safety.
        Mr. Gooden. Thank you, I appreciate that.
        I yield the balance of my time to Mr. Correa from
    California.
        Mr. Correa. Thank you, Mr. Gooden. Gentlemen, listening to
    your debate today reminds me of what General Patton used to
    say, which is lead, follow, or get out of the way. AI is moving
    faster than we imagined, or even expected just last year,
    touching every aspect of our lives. Most of our constituents,
    like many of us here, don't know a lot about it, but they know
    enough to expect that we here will protect them, their jobs,
    children, and intellectual property.
        The debate about whether it is local control or Federal
    control, is second to the fact that we just can't move on this
    stuff at the Federal level. Mr. Frazier, you are from Texas, I
    am from California, fourth largest economy in the world. How do
    you coordinate Federal and State action to make sure that we
    respond to our constituents responsibly? Thank you.
        Mr. Frazier. Thank you for the question, and I was a
    Beckley Law grad, so I shared some California ties. I want to
    emphasize that we do need to see regulation in this space, and
    we need to see that Americans are protected, and especially our
    vulnerable communities and children. What I am concerned about
    are laws like AB1046 out of California, for example, that
    impose on AI companions a desire to prioritize factual accuracy
    over a user's preferences, specifically--
        Mr. Correa. The laws 1047 or 1046?
        Mr. Frazier. The AB1046, prioritizing factual accuracies
    over the preferences of the user, in this case a child. To
    which I ask who gets to define factual accuracy? Is it
    California State government? Who is going to answer the
    question of whether Santa is real for a seven-year old? Who is
    going to make factual determinations about religion for that
    child user? Those questions shouldn't be answered by California
    for the rest of the country.
        Mr. Correa. I would ask you to also look at SB53 that is
    now being addressed in the California State legislature, and
    see what you opine on that as well.
        Mr. Frazier. I think SB53 is the least bad option I have
    seen with respect to AI development regulation. As we have
    discussed in this hearing, AI development in my opinion, and in
    the opinion of many should be left to the national government
    as a core--
        Mr. Correa. Anything you agree with in SB53?
        Mr. Frazier. I very much agree with the whistleblower
    protections, that is an important mark. I also agree with the
    fact that it calls on regulators to revisit definitions and
    terms frequently to make sure they are working as intended.
        Mr. Correa. Thank you, Mr. Gooden and Mr. Chair, I yield.
        Mr. Issa. Thank you. We now go to the Ranking Member of the
    Full Committee, the gentleman from Maryland.
        Mr. Raskin. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I don't
    understand the attack on the patchwork of laws. Maybe that is
    because I am a quilt person, I like patchworks, but isn't that
    what federalism is? federalism is a patchwork. That is how,
    that is the glory of the American governmental system.
        To be sure that the Congress gets it together to adopt a
    national law eventually on everything from the Clean Air Act,
    to the Clean Water Act, to the National Labor Relations Act,
    and the Fair Labor Standards Act, but it would have made no
    sense to say before those Federal laws were passed, let us wipe
    out the State laws that exist on child labor, minimum wage, not
    polluting the water, or not polluting the air.
        In fact, that contradicts what I thought the central
    dynamic of federalism was, which is the States are the
    laboratories of democracy, that was Brandeis, and then the
    different changes that they make are compared to each other,
    and then they bubble up, and Congress takes all it into account
    when it decides to attempt a nationwide approach. Is that a
    fair statement of the situation, Professor Richards?
        Mr. Richards. Absolutely. I also have a degree in early
    American history from the University of Virginia. My studies in
    early Federal history--
        Mr. Raskin. Virginia is getting a lot of play today, I
    don't know, as a Maryland guy I have got some questions about
    that.
        Mr. Richards. Would you like me to continue?
        Mr. Raskin. Please.
        Mr. Richards. Absolutely, the goal of federalism is to have
    laws that are more responsive to the people who are closer to
    those representatives that the legislatures of particular
    States can adapt to that particular State's problems,
    strengths, and also to protect, to experiment.
        Mr. Raskin. OK, so just to restate the obvious, there is an
    attempt to impose a moratorium on State laws, or to wipe out
    State laws. How is that different from the way that Federal
    preemption has taken place in the other cases that came to mind
    for me?
        Mr. Richards. Well, sometimes Federal preemption can, just
    through the Supremacy Clause, preempt particular laws, or laws
    that are inconsistent with a Federal mandate. In addition,
    Congress is allowed to operate in ways to set a general
    national standard but still allows States to experiment with
    stronger standards so that the innovation in regulation can
    continue at pace with the innovation in technology as you and
    Mr. Jefferson put it so well.
        Mr. Raskin. In addition to those differences, isn't it the
    case that a moratorium today would just wipe out State laws
    without substituting anything, without imposing a national law?
        Mr. Richards. Absolutely--
        Mr. Raskin. Is there any precedent for just doing that,
    saying we don't want any State laws at all while we think it
    over, or while we are stuck in some kind of legislative
    paralysis?
        Mr. Richards. I can't think of one, and that is why I think
    it would be disastrous.
        First, depending on how the law is defined, it could sweep
    very, very broadly, and take out laws that are important and
    protective, that everybody on this panel would agree are good
    laws.
        Second, if you have a broad preemption, this would be a
    defense that tech companies could make in every piece of
    litigation, increasing the cost of the litigation system as the
    contours of that preemption definition could continue to affect
    litigation years into the future.
        Mr. Raskin. Yes. Some people are with us today who are
    involved in, or have been involved in different kinds of
    litigation, and my heart goes out to them, being a father who
    has lost a son, and these are all people who have lost children
    in different kinds of interactions with chat bots, and other
    kinds of AI technology.
        I just want to recognize Kristin Bride from Oregon, who
    lost her son Carson, he was sixteen, in 2020, the same year we
    lost our son Tommy. Juliana Arnold who lost her 17-year-old
    daughter Coco to fentanyl poisoning after she purchased a
    counterfeit pill online. Megan Garcia from Florida, who lost
    her 14-year-old son Sewell, who took his life in February after
    months of abusive interactions with a Character AI chat bot.
        Jane Doe from Texas, whose son, JF, suffered severe
    physical and mental health harm after multiple chat bots
    instructed and encouraged him to engage in self-harm and self-
    violence. All of which is to say in my mind there are profound
    problems here that we really do need to deal with.
        The last thing I would want to do is to try to nullify
    States that have already addressed the problem in response to
    constituents dealing with a nightmare like that without
    replacing it with something. I am not averse to the idea that
    there might be a national law that works, but certainly
    imposing a legislative vacuum on the country would be a really
    dangerous way to go.
        Thank you, Mr. Chair, I yield back.
        Mr. Issa. You are most welcome. With that, we go to the
    gentlelady from Florida for five minutes.
        Ms. Lee. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Frazier, I would like to
    return to you, I appreciate so much your discussion of the
    Commerce Clause, and you made some important distinctions for
    us already in your testimony when you talked about the need for
    the Federal Government to intervene, and think about preemption
    when we are talking about a subject that affects the economic
    or political stability of the United States.
        You drew a distinction between pig sties and artificial
    intelligence. Would you elaborate for us please, about why you
    believe the things that we are discussing here today do go to
    the heart of the economic and political stability of the United
    States, and should be distinct from those areas where the
    laboratories of democracy concept actually works?
        Mr. Frazier. Thank you for the question, Representative
    Lee. It is profoundly important to get back to that Brandeis
    quote about laboratories of democracy. There is a forgotten
    portion of that quote, which is ``without risk to the Nation.''
    You can run an experiment without risk to the Nation. Many of
    these experiments that we are seeing proposed and enacted in
    California do pose a risk to the Nation, because they try to
    impede AI innovation itself.
        When we see individual States reach into the AI development
    process, they are not just tinkering with a modular process,
    there is not an AI specific training ground for California that
    Open AI does. Anthropic doesn't train its models 50 times over
    for each State.
        While there may be a lane for State regulation, and I
    believe there is a lane for State regulation with respect to AI
    use, we have to followup and ask the question of what does a
    real experiment look like? That experiment can't be one that
    exceeds the borders of that State. Yet, California's bills time
    and time again would result in labs having to change their
    practices the Nation over.
        I have lived in California, I have lived in Florida, I have
    lived in Texas, I have lived in Oregon, I have lived in
    Massachusetts, and in D.C., and I can tell you in each of those
    places they don't want Californians to dictate the terms of
    their AI.
        Ms. Lee. I also need to followup on this question. You said
    something interesting when you were talking about current
    copyright law, how it operates, and really ensuring that we are
    still honoring the concepts of content creators and
    intellectual property, you suggested an economic analysis of
    what is happening with the use of this content and training
    models.
        Would you elaborate for us a bit more on how that would
    look, and how we can get to the bottom of how to properly
    compensate those content creators?
        Mr. Frazier. Happily, and thank you for the question. If
    you look at current settlements, for example in the Bartz v.
    Anthropic decision, and you begin to analyze who those funds
    actually go toward, a large number of that fee is going to go
    to publishers. It is not going to go to the actual authors
    themselves. If we are trying to incentives the creation of new
    art, and new discoveries, and new scientific discoveries,
    copyright may not be the vehicle we need.
        It is not serving the same purpose it did in 1789, back
    when it was just limited to 14 years with the possibility of a
    14-year renewal. It is now 70 years plus the life of the
    author. That is an incredibly long time, especially when you
    consider that the founders really hate monopolies.
        The fact that we ended up in a world in which a handful of
    publishers may be able to dictate the quality of our AI is
    antithetical to the original purpose of the AI Clause.
        Ms. Lee. Thank you. Mr. Thierer, one of the things that you
    touched on was the idea that Congress could explore giving NIST
    or CAISI more authority to develop standards for AI frontier
    models. Would you share more on your perspective of how we
    might do that? Should we designate a single Federal entity to
    try to develop those standards? Share with us a little more of
    your thoughts there, please.
        Mr. Thierer. Yes, absolutely, thank you for the question,
    Congresswoman. Let us be clear that the reason that NIST needs
    to play a role here in this new CAISI body is because they have
    the ability to address exactly what the problem is here, which
    is that many States are attempting to impose a very
    technocratic type of design on artificial intelligence models
    and systems preemptively, in an almost European style way.
        That is a huge problem, I will just again quote from
    Governor Jerry Polis, who said,

            Government regulation as applied at the State level in a
            patchwork across the country can have the effect to tamper
            innovation and deter competition in an open market.

        It is not just that, these States lack the technical
    capability to do some of this in certain circumstances, and
    lack the information needed to do it properly.
        We have set up this body, I should remind the Committee,
    setup under President Biden and retained by President Trump in
    a bipartisan move and just renamed to focus more on standards
    and innovation, that is a good plan. Once again, we have a
    bipartisan agreement here, we have got a new technical body,
    and they can handle it in conjunction with other existing
    policies, both Federal and State.
        Ms. Lee. Thank you. Mr. Chair, I yield back.
        Mr. Issa. Thank you. We now go to the gentlelady from
    California, Ms. Lofgren.
        Ms. Lofgren. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Before I make remarks or
    questions, I would like to ask unanimous consent to put into
    the record a letter from the California Privacy Protection
    Agency.
        Mr. Issa. Without objection, so ordered.
        Ms. Lofgren. Thank you. The title of this hearing, ``A
    Nationwide Strategy or Californication,'' I take a little bit
    of exception to. I get it, people brought up California because
    we set the pace, but it is worth noting that my colleague from
    California Mr. Correa mentioned California is the fourth
    largest economy in the world with over 4.1 trillion in GDP.
        It surpassed Japan last year, and trailed only Germany,
    China, and the United States as a whole. It is No. 1,
    California is the No. 1 State for manufacturing. It is home to
    the most Fortune 500 companies in any State, more than forty
    are in Silicon Valley, my home. It also has the highest
    agricultural output of any State.
        It is home to five of the Nation's top ten public
    universities, UCLA, UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, UC Davis, and UC
    Irvine. It accounts for over 12 percent of all university R&D
    expenditures in the United States, with the University of
    California system alone spending more than 12.1 billion.
        It receives more NIH funding than any other university
    system in the United States. Now, these aren't just vanity
    stats, they are the foundation of the modern innovation economy
    that California has built. World class universities, labs,
    investors, entrepreneurs, workers who turn ideas into jobs,
    into growth, California has been, and remains the leader in
    technology, and the engine that built our economy now powers
    our AI leadership.
        California leads the world with 32 of the top 50 AI
    companies based here. Although it is always fun to criticize
    the most successful State, we must be doing something right to
    have achieved all this. Now, this is a hearing on AI, and some
    of the comments made by the witnesses I agree with.
        Mr. Bray, you mentioned that upgrading existing domain
    specific laws is more pragmatic than attempt sweeping new
    regulations, and I very much agree with that. That is also
    going to need room for regulations that are specific, or laws
    that are specific to each State. There are things that are the
    proper purview of States, and there are things that are the
    proper purview of the Federal Government.
        Certainly, I was a critic of Mr. Weiner's bill from the
    last session, and that it overreached in the national security
    effort. I also agree, Mr. Thierer, that the E.U. approach is
    incorrect. To try and micromanage the workings of the AI system
    is doomed to failure it seems to me. However, the
    recommendations that we simply preempt while we have nothing
    put together now are problematic.
        I have just got to say, Mr. Chair, and you are also a
    Member of the Science Committee along with me, we had a pretty
    effective bipartisan task force on AI in the last Congress
    Chaired by Mr. Obernolte from California, as well as Ted Lieu
    from California. They took the first step, they didn't finish
    the job, but they haven't even been reconstituted in this
    Congress.
        We do heavily rely on NIST, an agency that is widely
    respected in the Congress, and in the technological world, but
    we have got to look at what has happened to NIST. They have
    been eviscerated by the DOGE people, and I fail to see how they
    are going to be able to perform the tasks we are hoping that
    they can perform, given what has happened to them.
        I would just like to say that we ought to be working on a
    bipartisan basis again. The Science Committee staff task force,
    I would urge the speaker and whatever influence the Chair can
    have to reestablish that AI task force as a super Subcommittee
    of the Science Committee, so that we can get more work done,
    and get to where we need to be to have the guardrails and the
    standards that are appropriate at a national level.
        While also recognizing there are things that are of value
    at the State levels. The note from Open IA just mentioned that
    online age verification is something they support. There are
    things that the States can do, there is things that the Federal
    Government can do, but we are not going to do anything unless
    we can get our act together, and reinstitute that task force,
    and get some more work done.
        With that, Mr. Chair, I yield back.
        Mr. Issa. I thank the gentlelady, and I note that both
    sides of the title reflect California as the home of the
    innovation that is driving it. I might also take an opportunity
    to completely agree with your comments related to the need for
    us to act, that a preempting without a solution, without some
    of the work that is being currently worked on both here in the
    House and Senate would not be well received.
        We have the ground work for a lot of the kind of work that
    you and I have done together, and I look forward to very much
    this hearing being the beginning of us launching bipartisan
    legislation, because we do need to act in some cases, and you
    have always been a good partner in that acting.
        With that, we continue, with deference to my great State
    the Commonwealth of Virginia, we will continue with the
    California effort.
        Go to Mr. Kiley for five minutes.
        Mr. Kiley. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I wholeheartedly agree
    with my colleague from California, that our State continues to
    be the center of breathtaking innovation worldwide. However,
    the competency of our State government is another matter
    entirely.
        Not to impugn the competence of any of my former colleagues
    in the Sacramento legislature, but this is a body that
    struggles with things like building roads, delivering
    electricity, managing forests, building dams, and getting water
    to come out of hoses. The notion that this is the right body to
    regulate the most powerful technology in human history, whose
    workings are actually largely beyond the understanding even of
    technology's creators is a fairly fantastical notion.
        Not only that, but we are also faced with technology that
    continues to accelerate in capability, in an exponential way,
    in a way that is unlike anything we have seen before. Just to
    take one very specific example, you have leading models who
    have recently gotten the gold model on the International Math
    Olympiad, something that most experts thought was still going
    to be years away.
        I do think the risk that California is going to drive AI
    policy for the entire country is a very real one. That a
    national framework that seeks to stop that from happening is
    needed and appropriate. More specifically, I see the Federal
    role as including the following.
        First, of course, we need to be prepared to combat concrete
    harm, as they arise, and harm where the use of AI tools can
    sort of accentuate the risk.
        Second, there needs to be risk assessment type tools, and
    as much as I have been giving California a hard time, there are
    some decent ideas in this latest bill, incident reporting,
    transparency as far as safety protocols.
        Of course, there is a tremendous role for the Federal
    Government when it comes to the infrastructure needs behind the
    ever escalating investment in data centers. Beyond that, it is
    very important that policymakers continue to be apprised as to
    the capabilities of these models. In fact, both sides of it,
    the risks, as well as the capabilities.
        There are of course channels that exist both between the
    government, and among the labs themselves, but that most of us
    as policymakers, unless you are out looking for it, are not
    kept up to speed on exactly where the leading edge is. I think
    that is all very important. I think there could also be a lot
    more investment in actually safety, and alignment related
    research.
        The labs do this themselves, but they are not necessarily
    incentivized to do it, and so there could be more of a Federal
    role for promoting basic cutting-edge safety related and
    alignment related research. Then, finally, and maybe most
    importantly, I think that part of this conversation that we
    have been focusing a lot on when it comes to discussions of AI,
    there have been more of them happening here lately, but they
    have been really oriented on the aspects of the issue that are
    familiar.
        OK, the issues related to energy, issues related to water,
    some of the risks that are of a familiar kind. The discussion
    has not focused much on the broader question of how we are
    going to prepare society for the enormous changes that are
    likely to be ushered in the coming years? When we get to this
    idea of States as laboratories of democracy, or of
    experimentation, this actually is maybe the context in which
    that idea is most relevant.
        Because when it comes to sort of regulating the
    capabilities and constraining the capabilities of the systems
    themselves, the laboratories of democracy idea aren't really
    fitting. (1) There is an enumerated Federal power when it comes
    to interstate commerce. (2) You talk about experimentation,
    this is sort of something that we have to get right, and we
    only get one shot at.
        There is a widely shared view that once AI capability
    crosses a certain threshold, whether that be recursive self-
    improvement or some other threshold, there is sort of going to
    be an escape velocity, so that has implications for the sort of
    narrower geopolitical context of which country leads in the
    technology.
        Also, for the broader idea, is this technology going to be
    aligned with and beneficial to humanity? I do think that States
    can play a role when it comes to preparing society for using
    this technology for good in various domains. For example
    education, that you are seeing States already experimenting
    with ways that AI can be used to close achievement gaps, and to
    bring tools to students unlike anything we have ever had
    before.
        Transportation, States can take a lead, and some States
    have taken a lead in preparing our transportation systems for
    the increasing capacity for autonomy within various modalities.
    Finally, there are various other examples, but a final example
    I will mention is the use of AI itself in government, to
    improve government processes.
        We are seeing some of here at the Federal level, we are
    seeing some experimentation with States and other countries
    across the world. When it comes to being laboratories of
    democracy and the role of States here, that is probably where
    States can be most valuable, and our role in Congress should be
    to pursue some sort of Federal framework.
        I yield back.
        Mr. Issa. I thank the gentleman. We now go to the patient
    gentlelady from North Carolina for her five minutes, Ms. Ross.
        Ms. Ross. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I have a
    unanimous consent request. I ask unanimous consent to enter
    into the record a letter by Frank Cullen, Executive Director of
    the Council of Innovation Promotion to you and the Ranking
    Member dated September 18, 2025, which expresses the council's
    concern regarding recent proposals for Congress to impose a
    moratorium on State level regulation of AI.
        Mr. Issa. Without objection, so ordered.
        Ms. Ross. Thank you again to both the Chair and the Ranking
    Member for organizing this very important hearing, and to the
    witnesses for your testimony. I am glad that we are talking
    about how Congress and other lawmakers can responsibly
    legislate and regulate around AI. I represent the research
    triangle in North Carolina.
        I have seen the incredible things that AI can do,
    particularly in the medical area, and in biopharma. I am just
    blown away by the powerful and positive use of AI. I have also
    seen the negative effects of AI, and I am thrilled that one of
    those issues has been brought up by Representative Cline, and
    Representative Lee, and that is the ongoing necessary
    litigation that is happening with content creators and
    copyright.
        I was with the head of Anthropic this morning talking about
    how much money they are having to pay for what they did that
    was illegal, flat out illegal. I hope and look forward to
    working with Mr. Chair and the Ranking Member to make a hearing
    on that issue, and we have had a couple of those hearings
    happen again, but do it in a way that we can promote good
    behavior by AI companies.
        I also love California, and I know we are talking about
    California, but I want to bring up some crucial areas where
    other States have regulated AI in necessary ways. I know that
    we have parents of children who have been hurt by AI here. The
    States are ahead of Congress in protecting our children.
        Given our inaction, many States have stepped up, passing
    legislation covering topics that run the gamut from expanding
    CSAM laws to cover AI generated material in Alabama, to
    prohibiting AI from being used to provide mental healthcare
    services in Nevada. Then, we have been talking about democracy,
    prohibiting the use of AI during an election to create
    political messaging that contains deep fakes of candidates for
    office in New Hampshire.
        We have been talking about federalism, but sometimes the
    States have to act. I also have some concerns, I fully agree
    with the Chair, and a lot of the sentiment here that Congress
    does need to come together in a bipartisan way. Some of the AI
    companies want this preemption because they know that they can
    muck up the Congressional situation.
        Which isn't that hard to do and create the inaction so they
    can do whatever they want to do for as long as they possibly
    can do it. With that long introduction, Professor Richards, the
    Federal Government often regulates in particular areas that
    affect interstate commerce like air travel. The States have
    areas where they traditionally take the lead, like insurance.
        When it comes to the States making laws that affect AI
    deployment, what sectors or use cases should continue to be
    within the State's purview, where the Federal Government
    shouldn't get in the way?
        Mr. Richards. Thank you for your question, Representative
    Ross. There are numerous lists of them, and I hope that the
    Committee will indulge me, if I forget one, there are too many
    to count. I would say in healthcare, in the provision of
    medicine, I work a lot with our physician scientists at
    Washington University through the Cordell Institute, and they
    are concerned about having access to AI technologies to treat
    their patients.
        Also, to be sure that the delivery of those treatments, and
    the development of those treatments is done in a way which is
    consistent with the ethical, and sustainably ethical practice
    of medicine. I mentioned in my opening remarks the problem we
    have in the courts of hallucinated citations, that States
    should be able to safeguard the integrity of their judicial
    systems and the litigation processes by AI specific laws.
        That general laws will not be enough in these cases given
    the particular fraudulences and applications that AI produces.
    I think about education, I believe it was Mr. Kiley that spoke
    about that a moment ago. AI does have the potential to help
    people in education, but it also does tend to create massive
    plagiarism problems. I am being indicated to wrap up by the
    Chair, so I will pause there.
        Ms. Ross. Thank you very much, and I yield back.
        Mr. Issa. Professor, you are knowledgeable, and we
    appreciate, and that is why I didn't stop it at the bell by any
    means, I wanted you to finish what you were working on.
        With that, we go to the gentleman from Wisconsin for five
    minutes.
        Mr. Fitzgerald. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Thierer, you have
    written previously about California taking a European style
    approach to regulation. Chair Jim Jordan of the Full Judiciary
    Committee, and Mr. Kiley, and I were just in Europe last month
    talking with businesses, both European businesses, and then
    American businesses with headquarters in Europe now, within the
    EU, many of them in Dublin actually.
        What they told us was that this type of ex-ante regulation
    where anticompetitive practices are regulated before they
    exist, it typically undermines or overburdens companies before
    they can scale, and it kills a lot of the small businesses
    before they are up and running. It is exactly what Europe has,
    it is why they have no gatekeepers.
        We are the gatekeepers. America innovates, China
    duplicates, and then the E.U. regulates, that is where we are
    at right now on a grand scale. If the U.S. were to follow the
    EU's model of over regulating AI before it is understanding the
    risks, what impact would that have on AI development and
    competition?
        Because I believe that the E.U. is trying to create a space
    for themselves, just like they are with the seven American
    corporations for the most part created in California, there is
    one other one called ByteDance, you might have heard of it, but
    now we have the E.U. telling us with the DMA, the Digital
    Markets Act, how we can function, and how we can advance
    ourselves as an American economy. It is very frustrating.
        Mr. Thierer. Yes, you have got it exactly right,
    Congressman, let us actually put some numbers on this. I often
    when I am lecturing to students or other audiences, I ask them,
    can you name any leading global digital technology innovators
    that are headquartered in the European Union today? I am
    usually met with silence.
        There are a couple, but actually 18 of the 25 largest
    digital technology companies in the world by market cap are
    American based companies, only two are European, most people
    can't name them. When I ask that question, most people say
    companies that are now defunct like Skype, and others.
        Innovation has died in the European Union; they have
    committed essentially continental wide technological suicide
    with a regulatory model that is based on a sort of guilty until
    proven innocent mind set. Where every single technology or
    innovation is somehow nefarious, and must be bottled up, and
    preemptively regulated.
        This is why compared to the past, where the United States
    and Europe were very, very even situated in the early 1990s, we
    went down two very different paths. Our path, our more pro-
    innovation, pro-growth path that really the Clinton/Gore
    Administration unlocked with a Republican Congress in a
    bipartisan way, that yielded incredible benefits for our
    Nation, which made us the global leader.
        The household names in digital technology in the European
    Union today are American companies. What is the European Union
    exporting on the digital technology front? Red tape. That is
    about all I have got left.
        Mr. Fitzgerald. Mr. Frazier, what would be some of the
    appropriate regulations that States could do a good job on?
    Then, how would we fold that into kind of at the Federal level
    having some oversight, what are your thoughts on that?
        Mr. Frazier. Yes, thank you very much for the question,
    Congressman. That dividing authority on AI development versus
    AI use threshold is very important. If States want to regulate
    the use of AI, the application AI in schools for example, in
    healthcare situations for example, those are instances in which
    States can truly run experiments, because they are finite, they
    are within their own borders, and they are specific to their
    residents.
        When we see States beginning to enact proposals that are
    going to impact how AI models are trained and developed, that
    is necessarily going to bleed into other States, raising
    profound extrater-
    ritoriality concerns. That a moratorium in Congress focusing on
    the difference between AI use and application versus AI
    development is a very helpful place to begin.
        What I would also encourage Congress to consider is the
    creation of a cause of action that allows non-State residents
    more means to contest the extraterritoriality of different
    State AI regulations, so that we are not just waiting for
    California to regulate, and just hope no one challenges it.
    Empowering Americans to say AI is too essential to allow one
    big State to set the terms for the rest of us.
        Mr. Fitzgerald. Thank you for that answer. Chair, before I
    yield back, I just wanted to make the comment that, I mean one
    of the concerns on many different fronts is how do you strike
    this balance between State development, and economies, and not
    seeing an overreach like we have seen here in D.C. many times.
        With that, I yield back.
        Mr. Issa. I thank the gentleman; the gentleman yields back.
    We now go to yet another gentleman from California.
        Mr. Lieu. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am a recovering computer
    science major, and when I was studying computer science, I
    thought neural networks, they are never going to work. Just
    take whatever I say with a grain of salt. I would like to just
    note for the record what happened. Congress established in the
    House of Representatives a bipartisan AI task force, I was the
    Co-Chair.
        There were 12 Democrats, 12 Republicans, and we all agreed
    on over 80 recommendations in a bipartisan manner, a number of
    which will be turned into legislation. Instead, the Trump
    Administration basically says no, we don't want Congress doing
    anything, and we will go into States and not have them do
    anything, we are going to have zero regulation.
        The Trump Administration tried to put in a 10-year
    moratorium ban on States that was opposed by 17 Republican
    Governors, 20 Republican Attorney Generals, and 130 Republican
    State lawmakers. Then, that 10-year proposed ban failed 99 to
    one in the U.S. Senate, a spectacular rejection of what the
    administration was trying to do.
        Now, we are in a place where the actual reality is it is
    not whether we are going to regulate AI, it is do you want 17
    States doing it, or do you want Congress to do it? With that
    lead in, Mr. Thierer, I know you were in support of the AI
    moratorium, your approach failed, so now we are in this new
    sort of position since it has failed.
        I am curious what areas do you think Congress should
    regulate in? Because it is clear we are not going to preempt
    with nothing, right? What are the things that you think that
    would be helpful and further American innovation?
        Mr. Thierer. Sure. Well, first, Congressman, I want to
    thank you for your leadership on this with Representative
    Obernolte, with the House AI task force, and then also the
    legislation that you did mention, that you sponsored on this.
    That was a good starting building block for what we can do.
        We have heard many other Members here today talk about the
    sort of things that NIST could be doing, or the new CAISI,
    which again is a carryover from the AI Safety Institute. We
    could take some of the ideas that have already been percolating
    at the State level, including in California, and New York and
    others, to basically build on what can be done in Federal
    legislation.
        You can combine that with other sort of targeted actions, I
    want to remind everyone here, people say Congress doesn't do
    anything, has everybody already forgotten about the Take it
    Down Act? Passed overwhelmingly, right? We can take targeted
    approaches to this, and we can take broad approaches. The point
    is that we can't have the technocratic design of regulation
    being done in a patchwork like this.
        That is going to create serious problems for American
    innovators as we continue to try to race against China to build
    our capacity. We have to balance safety and innovation at the
    same time. We do need to have some preemption, in my testimony
    I spelled it out in detail how to do this, but reserve certain
    powers to the State.
        I want to agree with the Democratic attorney general of
    Massachusetts, who said quote,

            Existing State consumer protection antidiscrimination data
            security laws still apply to emerging technology, including AI
            systems, as they would in any other context.

    That is exactly right. States can continue to do that, but we
    need to have a Federal framework to make sure we get this done
    right.
        Mr. Lieu. Thank you. Just as a side, there may have been
    some disparagement of California. I just want to note Apple was
    headquartered in California, Google, Meta, Anthropic, and
    Nvida, turns out that California does pretty darn well with the
    laws that we have. Professor Richards, I have a question for
    you. California is now proposing SB53, have you looked at that
    in the California legislature at all?
        Mr. Richards. Not at the level of detail that I want to
    answer questions under oath on it.
        Mr. Lieu. OK, that is fine. Now, you in your testimony,
    thinks that--
        Mr. Issa. Gentlemen, before you came in, Mr. Frazier
    actually has studied, and is quite favorable in many areas of
    it, if you--
        Mr. Lieu. Tell me about SB53, what is your view of it?
        Mr. Frazier. Earlier in my remarks I said that SB53 is the
    least bad State bill I have seen with respect to AI
    development. That it gets right a lot of the emphasis on
    information sharing that we know is essential to leading to
    better AI policy. The sorts of disclosures that SB53 calls for
    from labs is a very positive step.
        I would like to see it done at a Federal level, and not at
    the State level. I also think that the whistleblower
    protections called for in SB53 are important to contribute more
    information sharing. I will note that, for example, Senator
    Grassley has a whistleblower bill pending before Congress that
    I would prefer to be the vehicle for those sorts of
    protections.
        Mr. Lieu. Thank you, I appreciate that. Professor Richards,
    let me go back to you. Your view is there should be no
    preemption whatsoever, so let me just sort of ask you this
    question, and you can answer because my time will be up soon.
    When a large language model comes out that goes through this
    enormous amount of training and post training, and all this,
    and you have a model.
        Let us say one State says we are going to mandate testing,
    another State says we are not going to mandate testing. A third
    States not only are we going to mandate testing, we are going
    to mandate the 27 specific areas you have to test. Then,
    another State says we are going to go even further than that,
    and do 35 specific areas, and be very specific what you have to
    disclose, and on and on.
        How does even technically an AI company deal with that when
    they have one model? Do they just say we are just not going to
    be able to allow this to happen, for example, in Missouri,
    California, or Florida? How does it even work if you have 17
    States regulating one AI model?
        I will yield back and let him answer.
        Mr. Issa. I was giving you all that extra time so you can
    let him answer, and if there is a followup within reason I will
    let you have it.
        Mr. Lieu. Thank you.
        Mr. Issa. It is the advantage of being nearly at the end.
        Mr. Lieu. There we go, thank you.
        Mr. Richards. Under that hypothetical, Congressman, it
    would be very challenging for a company to apply it, but it is
    not my position that there should be no preemption, just that
    we should not consider broad preemption of State AI laws. Under
    appropriate circumstances, a sensible Federal law would be
    naturally preemptive, and I would welcome a reasonable Federal
    AI statute.
        Just as I have welcomed and advocated for a reasonable
    Federal privacy statute, which the United States is the only
    advanced economy that does not have one.
        Mr. Lieu. Great, thank you, I yield back.
        Mr. Issa. We now go right to the gentleman from California,
    what does the hat say, Eric?
        Mr. Swalwell. Jimmy Kimmel Live.
        Mr. Issa. Of course. The gentleman is recognized for five
    minutes.
        Mr. Swalwell. Thank you, Chair. I will get to AI in a
    moment, but I am not going to miss the opportunity to ask my
    colleagues, the proponents of free speech across the aisle, and
    the champions who sit with me, to condemn in the harshest terms
    what is happening right now from our administration. The second
    late night comedian has been taken off the air because the
    President did not like a joke.
        I want to first condemn in the harshest tones the murder of
    Charlie Kirk, he should be with his family right now, he should
    be with his children. He had a right to say what he wanted to
    say to who he wanted to say it without any physical violence
    being brought his way. Jimmy Kimmel had a right to say what he
    said.
        Which didn't in any way suggest that somebody in the MAGA
    world had been responsible for the murder of Charlie Kirk. He
    was just pointing out what folks online were doing as Twitter
    detectives before any investigation had been completed, were
    talking about the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
        Then, he pointed out that Donald Trump, who did not go to
    Kirk's memorial service at the Kennedy Center over the weekend,
    when he was asked how he was feeling about the assassination,
    did not address it, but rather went right to a construction
    project. For that, Jimmy Kimmel was taken off the air. That is
    not who we are, that is what it looks like in China, that is
    what it looks like in Russia, that can't be what it looks like
    in America.
        The foundation of this, the genesis of this was the
    President's FCC Chair Brandon Carr sending a tweet that said
    essentially, and giving an interview to a podcaster where he
    said essentially, if ABC doesn't want to do this the easy way
    and suspend Jimmy Kimmel, we will do it the hard way, and it
    would be government censorship.
        Maybe, I was not loud enough in the past when Republicans
    spoke out against government censorship, and if that is the
    case I will go back and revisit whether I could have been
    louder. That does not mean that today Republicans are silent
    just in an effort to own the libs. If you didn't like cancel
    culture when you thought it was happening in prior
    administrations, you certainly can't look at what just happened
    in our country and accept that this is something we should live
    with, and we should tolerate.
        I want to make it clear, there is going to be a democratic
    majority in just over a year, and to the FCC Chair, and anyone
    involved in these dirty deals, get a lawyer, and save your
    records, because you are going to be in this room, and you are
    going to be answering questions about the deals that you
    struck, and who benefited, and what the cost was to the
    American people because that happened.
        I want to now move, Chair, and I appreciate you holding
    this hearing, to AI, and ask our witnesses first, and I will
    start with Professor Richards. Professor Richards, what is the
    risk to the country if, particularly to children if the
    government does absolutely zero on AI as far as legislation, as
    far as what they see, privacy that is taken, biases that are
    reinforced, what do you see the risk could be?
        Mr. Richards. Thank you, Congressman. There are a number of
    risks, some of them are known, and some of them are unknown,
    which is why it is essential to preserve regulatory flexibility
    by the States as well as the Federal Government to deal with
    these questions. We have already discussed, and at some length,
    but perhaps we can't discuss it enough that the losses that the
    parents who are seated behind me have suffered.
        When we have the, in some cases, the reckless, or the rash
    deployment of software agents in children's lives, there were
    discussions about telling them about Santa, but they have done
    much, much worse, that is one of the risks, exacerbating the
    mental health epidemic. There are risks to children in schools,
    children don't read books anymore because of AI models.
        The States should be able to address that pedagogically,
    with particular consequences for our critical thinking skills
    that are necessary for our democracy.
        Mr. Swalwell. Thank you. Also, Mr. Thierer, I just want to;
    coming in from another meeting, I want to thank you for your
    remarks earlier about the FCC Chair, and his hypocrisy about
    censorship.
        With that, Chair, I will yield back.
        Mr. Issa. Does the gentleman yield for a second?
        Mr. Swalwell. Yes.
        Mr. Issa. As often happens there is a nuance of total
    agreement here, and I just want to speak well of your
    championing free speech, and perhaps those who leave broadcast
    like our mutual friend Bill Marr might find an even greater
    place, an even greater amount, I do agree with you that we need
    to continue to promote free speech.
        Your kind words related both in defense of one, but also on
    Charlie Kirk is very much appreciated, and I look forward to
    continuing to work with you--
        Mr. Swalwell. You and I have worked on a lot of issues, and
    this is one we can work on as well. Thank you, Chair.
        Mr. Issa. Thank you, appreciate it. That only leaves me. My
    job here is not just to ask questions, but perhaps to try to
    close on as positive a note as I can of what we seem to agree
    on. I am going to use question comment combination, I only ask
    that if I am accurate, you agree that I am somewhat accurate as
    briefly as possible.
        I will start primarily with Mr. Frazier, but I want to make
    sure I have total agreement. If Congress authors laws, and does
    it normally, not by definition unless we expressly trample on
    common law, common law remains a tool of the States, is that
    correct, Mr. Frazier?
        Mr. Frazier. That is correct, absent very clear language,
    yes.
        Mr. Issa. OK, so that is one of our challenges, to make
    sure that any preemption does not challenge existing laws. In
    the case of, if you will, existing laws in States, for example
    product liability laws, we never preempted those, even though
    we do have some Federal laws. The reality is an unsafe product,
    a product that injures people has a myriad of State laws that
    already affect it.
        For example, when we went from a man striking someone, to a
    man on a horse striking someone, to a man in a car striking
    someone, we didn't necessarily have to make major changes in
    the law, they all fell, and none of them were federally
    preempted.
        Mr. Frazier. Correct, and there is a reason why law
    professors laugh at the idea of the law of the horse.
        Mr. Issa. The law of the horse, exactly. Professor
    Richards, you gave us a great deal of caution, is it fair to
    say that if we clearly carve around any question of common law
    preemption, and at the same time do not stop causes of action
    which are, although perhaps automated by a bot and the like,
    still in fact follow that horse example that in fact for the
    most part don't we meet the requirement of allowing the States
    to continue to protect their citizens as they have for 250
    years?
        Mr. Richards. I believe, Chair Issa, that States should
    have the ability to continue to experiment with their own laws
    in addition to the common law.
        Mr. Issa. I fully agree with you, and I will go to Mr.
    Thierer, because this is both law and policy. You mentioned a
    number of times, ingestion versus output. Ingestion, which
    cannot easily be done, 50 different States and 210 different
    countries around the world.
        Isn't that also a case in which the Federal Government must
    both lead on where the standards are, particularly as to
    patent, copyright, other intellectual property, and to have a
    single voice speaking around the world to other countries?
        Mr. Thierer. Yes, that is right, Mr. Chair, and let us be
    clear. We wouldn't be here suggesting that we should have 50
    FDAs for food and drug standards, or 50 FAAs for different
    aviation standards by every State such that planes had to
    change every State, that would be crazy, right? We don't want
    that model for AI either. We don't want--
        Mr. Issa. A death by fentanyl, every State has a right to
    have--
        Mr. Thierer. Absolutely, you said it, and let us just be
    clear, let us just check off the generally applicable laws that
    would be exempt from either moratorium or preemption, civil
    rights law and discrimination, unfair and deceptive practices,
    and antifraud, competition policy laws at the State level,
    other consumer protections--
        Mr. Issa. In fact, the Lanham Act actually helps the
    States.
        Mr. Thierer. We can go on down this list, and then we can
    get into the lawsuits. The one thing America doesn't lack is an
    active trial bar, right? There are going to be a lot of ongoing
    lawsuits, and we should throw the book at bad actors. There are
    always going to be bad actors regardless of technology, we have
    the capability to go after them.
        Mr. Issa. Dr. Bray, I don't want to leave you out of this.
    Isn't one of the greatest cautions we heard today that we in
    fact have to make sure that when harm is done to anyone in a
    given State that they have a reasonable cause of action? If it
    doesn't exist federally, it must be available in the States, is
    that correct?
        Dr. Bray. That is fully correct, Chair, thank you.
        Mr. Issa. OK, Mr. Frazier, I am going to sort of guide this
    another way. From the standpoint of Federal laws, it is fair to
    say that for all practical purposes, patent, trademark, and
    copyright, these are bastions of Federal law because under the
    recognition that they all travel interstate, they have to have
    one standard rules of the road, correct?
        Mr. Frazier. It was very apparent to the founders that they
    did not want a patchwork approach to copyright and patent law,
    correct.
        Mr. Issa. They also said that no State could erect
    basically a draw bridge and charge a toll to pass from one
    State to the other, they specifically understood that States
    might do that.
        Mr. Frazier. It is a lesson we have learned throughout
    history with respect to, for example, attempts to change the
    length of a truck before it enters another State by 100 was
    declared unconstitutional, we have been here before, we don't
    want a patchwork when it comes to national goods.
        Mr. Issa. OK, well I am going to not far exceed, because we
    have the agreement that helps us in the guidelines. Certainly,
    in the case of one that was mentioned briefly, PADRA, which
    does deal with deep fakes, with digital likenesses and the
    like, and which we do have bipartisan support, and we look to
    move, that was an element today.
        I would like any of you that want to comment further for
    the record to do so. I guess the last thing that we all have to
    do is recognize for the families that came here, that we, from
    this Chair, and I think you heard it from both sides of the
    aisle, we want to make sure that if we pass a law that further
    helps protect against the losses that you had, that it consider
    exactly what happened in the case of your families.
        That if we pass a law that in no way should it stop the
    causes of actions that may exist. If anything, we at a Federal
    level for example, a death by fentanyl, we want to hold those
    who knowingly deceive and sell pills purported to be some kind
    of drug when in fact they are a deadly poison, that they be
    able to be charged with murder, as in some cases have been done
    at the State level.
        I can assure you from this standpoint, and I think the
    Ranking Member would not nod in any way but yes, that this is a
    common goal, and that we heard that message loud and clear. I
    want to thank those who are here today for their presence.
        I want to recognize Mr. Johnson for something he wants to
    place on the record.
        Mr. Johnson. Thank you. I have a couple of unanimous
    consent requests. I would ask--
        Mr. Issa. I know I am going to like them.
        Mr. Johnson. I would ask unanimous consent to enter into
    the record a letter by Alejandra Montoya-Boyer, the Vice
    President for the Center for Civil Rights and Technology at the
    Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. A letter to
    you, Chair Issa, and Ranking Member, myself, dated September
    18, 2025, which expresses the conference's views regarding the
    potential preemption of State's efforts to regulate AI--
        Also, to enter into the record a statement by Vered Horesh,
    the Chief of Strategic AI partnerships at Bria AI titled,
    ``Don't Ban State AI Laws.'' As well as a letter from 17
    Republican Governors to Speaker Johnson and Majority Leader
    Thune dated June 27, 2025, opposing the AI moratorium and the
    big ugly bill.
        Mr. Issa. Without objection, so ordered.
        In closing, I too have unanimous consents. I ask unanimous
    consent that an extensive report and letter from the
    organization known as Engine to both of us, which is a
    coalition of small startups, been around since I think 2011.
    Without objection, will be ordered.
        An additional letter from the Americans for Prosperity
    detailing the benefits versus the risks of fifty separate
    States. That will be placed on the record without objection.
        An article from Politico dated--there we go, dated
    yesterday, and it is the ``California-Washington Tech Fight
    Heats Up,'' will be placed in the record without objection.
        Additionally, a Politico article entitled ``We Don't Want
    California to set the Rules for AI across the Country Trump,
    Advisor Says,'' but also in spite of that being placed in the
    record.
        Last, I want to thank our witnesses. You have been
    informative, you have been helpful, and I think that this has
    in fact furthered our understanding of, quite frankly, our need
    to act, and our need to act with a restraint from some of the
    warnings that were given by Professor Richards. With that--I
    have two more, and then we are done.
        I would ask unanimous consent that the President's AI
    initiative to be placed in the record in its full.
    Additionally, the recent speech by Vice President Vance
    delivered in Europe be placed in the record. Without objection,
    those both will be ordered.
        Just to make it clear, additionally there will be general
    leave for similar items not specifically spoken to by Members
    on both sides of the aisle. They will have five days in which
    to submit those. As such, we stand adjourned.
        [Whereupon, at 12:06 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]

        All materials submitted for the record by Members of the
    Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet
    can
    be found at: https://docs.house.gov/Committee/Calendar/ByEvent
    .aspx?EventID=118623.

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