[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 119 (Tuesday, July 21, 2026)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4178-S4180]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                        Artificial Intelligence

  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, moving off of this vigorous debate between 
my two friends on a topic that I think actually is of equal importance.
  For most of the last decade, conversations about artificial 
intelligence were largely conversations about the future, but today 
they are conversations about the present.
  AI is already changing how we work, how we learn, how we defend 
ourselves, how businesses compete, and, candidly, how Americans live 
their daily lives.
  AI is writing software, discovering drugs, managing supply chains, 
helping defend our networks. It is already reshaping the economy, the 
workplace, and our national security.
  The question is no longer whether artificial intelligence will 
transform our society. The question is whether Congress will help shape 
that transformation or spend the next decade scrambling to catch up 
after the fact.
  Now, I have spent a lot of time on this issue over the last several 
years. Before entering public service, I spent my career in technology. 
I remain convinced that AI has enormous potential to improve lives, 
accelerate scientific discovery, strengthen our economy, and help 
America compete.
  And I share the concern of many Americans that the impacts of this 
technology on our country and on our culture could also, if we don't 
get it right, be catastrophic.
  Let's start with being honest with each other. We are not going to 
put this genie back in the bottle, and the amount of disruption this 
technology will bring over the next 5 years is beyond jaw-dropping.
  I believe Congress made a similar mistake once before. We largely 
stood on the sidelines as social media reshaped our politics, our 
economy, our kids. We waited until the problems became so obvious 
before we began asking whether there should have been some rules of the 
road put in place first.
  We cannot afford to make that same mistake again. That is why today I 
am introducing a legislative agenda--a series of bills--built around 
four simple principles:
  First, we need to build the infrastructure for America's AI future 
responsibly. The AI revolution depends on enormous amounts of physical 
infrastructure--particularly massive data centers being built in the 
Presiding Officer's State, many being built already in Virginia. These 
facilities place extraordinary demands on electricity, water, and local 
communities.
  Communities should not be asked to shoulder the cost of the AI 
revolution without knowing what they are signing up for. They deserve 
to know exactly what is being built in their backyard and a full 
understanding of what these facilities will mean for their electric 
grid, their water supply, their air quality, and local infrastructure.
  My Data Center Tax Accountability and Disclosure Act fixes the 
problem. It gives people the facts before they need to make decisions 
about their communities.
  My bill will ensure transparency about data center electricity and 
water consumption, backup power generation, and setbacks in residential 
communities, so as these data centers get built, they are not built 
right on top of residential neighborhoods--candidly, all information 
communities should have when planning and building decisions are being 
made.
  And part of the way we will make this new standard be met, if 
Congress is going to provide special tax breaks that allow companies to 
write off the cost of building these facilities far faster than they 
otherwise could, these subsidies should come with conditions.
  Companies receiving that taxpayer support--whether we want to call it 
bonus depreciation or accelerated depreciation--should meet strong 
standards for efficiency, sustainability, and accountability because 
American leadership in AI cannot come at the expense of the communities 
that make that leadership possible.
  Second, we need to promote competition, safety, and consumer trust. 
If AI is going to become the interface through which Americans shop, 
bank, communicate, receive medical advice, and navigate the internet, 
then people need confidence that these systems are working for them and 
not exploiting them. That means a couple of things:
  First, we need to preserve competition, especially when it comes to 
AI agents. We have seen what happens when a handful of dominant 
technology companies are allowed to become gatekeepers. Markets become 
less competitive, consumers have fewer choices, and innovation suffers.
  As AI agents increasingly act on our behalf online, Americans, not 
big tech companies, should be able to decide which services they use 
and, candidly, where their data goes.
  I plan to introduce new legislation to establish clear rights and 
responsibilities for these emerging AI agents so they can compete 
fairly while meeting strong standards for privacy, cyber security, and 
security protection.
  Second, we need meaningful safeguards against abuse.
  AI has extraordinary power and potential to improve lives, but it 
also makes it a lot easier to generate convincing fraud, exploit 
children, violate people's privacy, and create harmful content at 
unprecedented scale.
  There is absolutely no legitimate use for an AI system capable of 
generating child sexual abuse material or nonconsensual intimate 
images--no use at all.
  Companies developing these systems have a responsibility to build 
effective safeguards into their products--not after the harm occurs but 
before these systems are released. My legislation would establish a 
process to verify that AI models cannot generate child sexual abuse 
material or nonconsensual intimate images. And how to do that? By 
preventing the Federal Government from buying systems that fail those 
basic safeguards and giving survivors a meaningful path for justice 
when the protections fail.
  We have seen some of this already start to emerge in terms of 
chatbot. If you think social media wreaks havoc with your teenagers, 
think about a chatbot that might consciously or unconsciously encourage 
your child to do self-harm.
  As AI-generated content becomes increasingly sophisticated, we also 
have to protect our financial markets and our democratic institutions 
from fraud, deception, and manipulation, which is why, in the upcoming 
weeks, I will reintroduce my bipartisan legislation to require 
financial regulators to address the uses of AI-generated content that 
could disrupt financial markets. And it is coming.

[[Page S4179]]

  If the United States wants to lead the world in AI, we can't simply 
build the best models; we need to build the most trusted ones. History 
shows that transformative technologies succeed not only because they 
are powerful but because people have confidence in using them. Congress 
has a responsibility to help create this confidence by ensuring that 
there are clear rules of the road before problems arise.
  Third, we need to prepare America's workforce for the economy AI will 
generate.
  This may ultimately become the defining economic challenge of our 
time. It is also why Senator Rounds and I introduced bipartisan 
legislation creating an Economy of the Future Commission to help our 
country develop a long-term strategy for artificial intelligence and 
other transformative technologies.
  These changes won't happen overnight, and they won't be confined to 
one industry. We need a national strategy equal to the scale of the 
challenge because while there is every reason to believe that 
artificial intelligence will actually create new industries and new 
jobs over the long run, history tells us that technological revolutions 
rarely unfold smoothly.
  This transition can be enormously disruptive. Workers whose skills 
are no longer in demand don't experience the benefits of productivity 
gains quickly; they experience uncertainty, they experience layoffs, 
and they experience the challenge of building a new career while 
supporting a family.
  Some of the workers most exposed to this disruption may actually not 
be the ones traditionally exposed, as we thought about the internet in 
terms of low-skill jobs in rural communities. Today, unemployment 
amongst recent college graduates has risen to levels that should 
concern us all. As a matter of fact, I will bet that we will hit 30 
percent recent college graduate unemployment in the next 2 years. I 
hope I am wrong, but if I am not wrong, we are in a heap of trouble.
  Many of the occupations most vulnerable to generative AI are the very 
white-collar, entry-level jobs that have long served as the first rung 
on a career ladder--jobs in business, finance, marketing, software 
development, customer support, and other knowledge positions. If those 
entry-level opportunities begin disappearing faster than the new ones 
are created, we risk leaving an entire generation of young Americans 
struggling to gain a foothold in the workforce.
  We cannot simply assume that the market will sort it out on its own 
in a short-enough time. That is why today I am proposing a National 
Workforce Transition Fund to help workers navigate this period of 
technological change. This fund would support worker retraining, 
portable training accounts, employer redeployment programs, tuition 
assistance for high-demand careers--frankly, if we could get half the 
folks in college that are majoring in business to switch to healthcare 
fields, that would be a step in the right direction--and also add 
innovative approaches to help workers adapt to this AI economy.
  I am also introducing legislation to strengthen American's pipeline 
of homegrown STEM talent by helping universities create accelerated 
pathways into doctoral programs in critical technologies like AI, cyber 
security, semiconductors, and quantum.
  Earlier this year, I introduced the Investing in the American Workers 
Act because we need to rethink the incentives in our Tax Code. Today, 
our Tax Code makes it a heck of a lot easier for companies to invest in 
machines than in people. That doesn't make sense in an AI economy. If 
businesses benefit from the productivity gains AI creates, they should 
also have a strong incentive to invest in the workers who make those 
gains possible. Our goal here is not to stop technological progress; 
the goal is to make sure every American person has an opportunity to 
gain from this.
  Let me come to my final point. I realize we are approaching the vote, 
but I was supposed to start 30 minutes ago.
  Finally, I want to talk about artificial intelligence through the 
lens of national security.
  From my years on the Senate Intelligence Committee as chair and vice 
chair, I believe AI is one of the most consequential strategic 
technologies our country will confront in the coming decade. AI is 
rapidly becoming foundational to intelligence collection, cyber 
security, military planning, scientific research, and again, America's 
long-term competition with China. It will help analysts process 
information at a scale that no human workforce ever could. It will 
strengthen our ability to deter cyber intrusions, identify emerging 
threats, and support our military.
  If properly developed and secured, AI can become one of America's 
greatest strategic advantages, but we would be naive to believe our 
adversaries aren't racing toward the same goal. China has made 
artificial intelligence a national priority. So has Russia, Iran, North 
Korea, and more specifically, international criminal organizations.
  The same frontier AI models that accelerate scientific discovery can 
also identify cyber vulnerabilities, automate sophisticated cyber 
operations, and lower the barriers--
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Curtis). May we ask the Members to take 
their conversations off the floor?
  Mr. WARNER. Thank you, Mr. President. I have only got a couple more 
minutes. I will wrap up as quickly as possible.
  Maybe my colleagues might want to even listen to some of this because 
I think we actually have some good ideas here that cross both sides of 
the aisle.
  The same frontier AI models that accelerate discovery can also figure 
out where the vulnerabilities are in our systems. That is why we cannot 
approach frontier AI models the same way we approach ordinary software 
updates. The most advanced AI systems deserve a higher standard of 
security before they are widely deployed.
  I am proud to say that many of my friends inside the administration 
are recognizing this after the release of Mythos.
  My Secure AI Development Act would establish mandatory, secure 
testing for our most advanced AI networks and models; improve the way 
the government and industry actually work together because neither 
team, public or private, can do this alone; strengthen information 
sharing between AI developers and the Federal Government; and establish 
a voluntary AI safety incident reporting system modeled after the 
aviation system. That is one of the reasons why people climb on 
airplanes so regularly in this country--because they know that works. 
It would also strengthen protections against foreign adversaries trying 
to steal some of the best of these frontier models.
  One of the greatest lessons I have learned on the Intelligence 
Committee is that our national security failures often come when we 
recognize the threat but fail to act.
  We cannot continue to punt on this issue. I have never seen a 
technology advance as quickly as AI. Traditionally, the promoters of 
that technology say it is coming, it is coming, and then it takes 
another 10 years. In the case of AI, the leading figures are saying it 
is coming, and it is coming even faster than they expected. We don't 
have months or years to get this right.
  We need to combine the best of our innovation but also with some 
guardrails. As I started at the beginning, I think most of us would 
agree we would have a heck of a lot healthier generation of young 
people if we put some guardrails on social media. Social media is tiny 
compared to the power, both good and bad, around AI.
  So I have laid out here a series of ideas and legislation. I look 
forward to working with folks on both sides of the aisle. There is no 
Republican or Democrat version of AI. But if we don't take these issues 
up now, if we are still having this conversation at the end of the year 
or next spring, I believe it will be too late.
  I urge my colleagues to take a look at my ideas. If you have better 
ones, I welcome them. Let's move forward on this critical issue.
  With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor and reserve the time to 
come back another time to finish the other 6 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Thank you, Senator Warner.
  The Senator from Idaho.

[[Page S4180]]

  

                          ____________________