OpenAI Pushes 'Reverse Federalism' as Thune AI Bill Looms
TL;DR
- OpenAI's Chris Lehane openly calls the state-house strategy 'reverse federalism,' pushing similar AI safety laws in California, Illinois and beyond to preempt Congress.
- Senate Majority Leader John Thune says his AI safety bill with Ted Cruz and Amy Klobuchar will come 'hopefully soon,' but Democrats doubt it goes far enough.
- Trump calls anti-AI worry a 'hoax' and VP JD Vance calls the industry's regulation ask a 'Trojan horse,' even as Trump meets Sam Altman.
OpenAI and Anthropic have hired former Democratic and Republican officials to shape AI policy in state capitals rather than wait for a gridlocked Washington, Semafor's Ashley Gold reports.
The tactic has a name. OpenAI's chief of global affairs Chris Lehane, a former Clinton aide, calls it 'reverse federalism': get enough large states to pass substantially similar AI safety laws and let that harden into a de facto national standard before Congress catches up. 'You're basically getting the states to replicate each other,' Lehane says. OpenAI endorsed California's AI safety bill and is now backing audit-based legislation in Illinois that would require frontier labs to submit to audits. Anthropic, per Semafor, is deliberately backing progressively tougher state AI safety bills.
The federal picture is what makes the flanking move matter. President Trump posted on Truth Social that anti-AI sentiment is a 'hoax.' Vice President JD Vance said the industry's own regulation push 'feels a little bit to me like a bit of a Trojan horse.' Trump met with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on the sidelines of last week's GOP midterm convention. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, working with Ted Cruz and Amy Klobuchar, told Semafor his bipartisan AI safety bill would come 'hopefully soon' and argued that 'there is a way in which Congress can put guardrails around those types of consequential threats without in any way harming our ability to stay ahead.' Democrats fear it won't go far enough.
The picture inside OpenAI is not that clean either. Its president Greg Brockman and Andreessen Horowitz have been funding super PACs pushing for a single federal framework that would override state AI rules, the opposite of what Lehane is selling to state houses. Democratic 2028 contenders including Pete Buttigieg and Jon Ossoff are staking out AI policy as a lane of their own.
It lands on the same day as our coverage of ControlAI's Capitol Hill lobbying push and the NYT's tally of two years of stalled federal AI bills.
Originally reported by semafor.com
Read the original article →Original headline: Semafor: OpenAI and Anthropic Play 'Reverse Federalism' to Head Off Federal AI Rules by Shaping State Laws