Toward a Federal Framework: Lessons from State and International Frontier AI Regulation

Center for Strategic and International Studies  |  Laura Caroli, Aalok Mehta

United States state legislatures are enacting frontier artificial intelligence regulation—including California’s S.B. 53 and New York’s RAISE Act—establishing mandatory safety protocols, risk mitigations, and public transparency disclosures despite federal opposition. These state-level initiatives directly challenge Washington’s deregulatory stance under America’s AI Action Plan, which seeks to preempt state oversight and prioritize global technological dominance against foreign rivals.

However, the unexpected capability jumps of advanced frontier systems like Anthropic’s Mythos model—which demonstrated autonomous software vulnerability exploitation in April 2026—have forced federal policymakers to consider voluntary predeployment government evaluation mechanisms. While state frameworks converge on mandatory safety protocols and whistleblower protections, significant divergence persists internationally regarding model size thresholds, value-chain coverage, and catastrophic risk definitions compared to the European Union’s broader regulatory regime. Leveraging state regulatory models could provide a viable blueprint for federal legislation, balancing national security risk mitigation with technical innovation and economic competitiveness.

Comment

The autonomous exploitation of software vulnerabilities demonstrated by Anthropic’s Mythos model represents a fundamental shift in dual-use offensive cyber capabilities. Automated vulnerability discovery collapses the operational timeline for foreign adversary operations against defence network architecture. Consequently, access controls on high-capability weights function as a direct component of national cyber defence rather than standard industrial compliance.

Strategic Question for Discussion

If capability leaps like those exhibited by Anthropic’s Mythos model continue to outpace statutory governance, which mechanism will prove more effective at mitigating offensive cyber exploitation: mandatory government predeployment access or air-gapped weight containment?

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