US Intelligence Community Seeks Control of AI Oversight in White House Power Struggle

The Washington Post·high signal

The Washington Post reports that US spy agencies are pushing for direct authority over AI regulation, challenging the Commerce Department's current role. The intelligence community wants to pre-assess frontier models before public release — not just for safety, but to understand and potentially exploit capabilities before adversaries. NEC Director Kevin Hassett compared the proposed approach to FDA drug evaluation. The shift was triggered by Anthropic's Mythos model and its cybersecurity capabilities. This represents a fundamental pivot from the administration's earlier hands-off stance on AI.