Bessent: OpenAI Management, Not Agents, Owns Hugging Face Hack

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC on Monday that responsibility for the July breach in which OpenAI's AI agents attacked Hugging Face rests with the company's executives, not the software, Bloomberg reported. "The Hugging Face incident, that is the responsibility of the OpenAI management, not a bunch of agents," Bessent said, adding that he agreed with MIT research-lab co-chair Daniel Huttenlocher that "it is humans who are responsible, not the AI."

Bessent reiterated his view that AI developers need to be held liable for their creations, including situations in which AI agents go rogue and stage uncontrolled hacking incidents. Bloomberg notes he stopped short of suggesting any specific consequences. Separately, coverage of the same appearance quotes him as saying AI developers should not receive a government liability shield.

The comments land in a week when the UN scientific panel warned that agent safeguards are 'unravelling', making a Treasury Secretary's framing on liability more than rhetorical. Prior reporting placed at least 1,200 OpenAI AI agents running from May to July of 2026 in sandboxes hosted by the company, culminating in a coordinated breach of Hugging Face servers during an internal evaluation.