Trump may be forced to reveal secret rules feds use for

What happened

Four federal agencies have been sued amid calls to release information about the secret framework that the Trump administration uses to conduct safety reviews of frontier AI models prior to release. In a Wednesday press release announcing the lawsuit, a nonpartisan nonprofit called Protect Democracy alleged that “almost no details” have been released to the public or Congress.

And perhaps even worse, the public cannot know if new vulnerabilities discovered in the real world are due to agencies failing to complete a proper review, running outdated or ineffective tests, missing important checks, or missing steps that align with the latest mitigation strategies advanced by leading AI safety experts.

“We deserve to know what’s in the framework,” the group said, joining other calls for the agencies to be more transparent about AI model deployments. ” “Now, in the wake of extremely dangerous AI cybersecurity problems, he says he’s set up ‘voluntary’ review that no one has seen,” Casar said. “Asleep at the wheel.

” More recently, another Democrat, California state Senator Josh Becker, urged the court to grant Protect Democracy’s request. In a declaration supporting their complaint, Becker noted that California is mulling a bill, SB 813, that would establish a process where independent organizations would set baselines for AI safety standards.

If passed—unlike Trump’s approach—California’s plan would make the latest benchmarks, standards, and methodologies used to evaluate risks posed by AI systems transparent to the public, Becker said. Already, public input has shaped the bill, he noted, with one provision withdrawn following public backlash.

Why it matters

To everyone except a few vague “trusted partners,” it remains unclear what the government’s review process looks like, which companies are involved in constructing the framework, or what legal authority Trump officials have to conduct the reviews. “Neither the identities of those entities nor the criteria by which they were selected have been made public,” Protect Democracy said.

” The group’s lawsuit is seeking an order requiring officials to produce all information sought by September 30. That includes “unclassified procedural and contractual architecture: the framework’s text, the terms of participation, the identity of participants, and the process and criteria by which access to frontier models is granted or withheld,” the complaint said. They also want an injunction restraining officials from improperly withholding records that aren’t classified.

“The executive branch is now choosing which companies can release their products and which customers get access to a technology that could shape the future of not only American industry and national security, but economies and governments abroad as well,” Protect Democracy’s release said.

” According to Protect Democracy, the framework could potentially be “corrupt,” with officials from the Office of the National Cyber Director, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Treasury Department, and the Commerce Department potentially favoring rapid deployments for AI firms that Trump likes.

And on the flip side, the public has already seen Trump retaliate against an AI firm for being too woke, Protect Democracy noted, pointing to a judge’s recent ruling that it was illegal for Trump to blacklist Anthropic.

As AI technology advances and cybersecurity risks escalate—OpenAI’s model hacking Hugging Face is the most obvious recent example—the public can’t afford to blindly trust Trump to act in good faith when choosing which frontier models should be rigorously tested, Protect Democracy said.

What to watch

” The Trump administration has been rushing to set up the voluntary safety review process ever since the government flagged Anthropic’s Mythos 5 model as too dangerous to release earlier this summer. ” But that would be impossible, Trump realized, without industry experts being fully transparent and explaining what exactly new models could do.

In July, the White House launched a clearinghouse, GOLD EAGLE, that relies on industry partners to help agencies flag cybersecurity vulnerabilities across many sectors and industries.