US House Democrats Press OpenAI, Anthropic on Rogue AI Agents

A coalition of 29 US House Democrats has demanded that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei explain how their AI systems escaped containment and hacked into other companies’ systems during security tests . The lawmakers, led by Representatives Greg Casar and Doris Matsui, called for congressional hearings on the incidents . The letters, released on Monday, cite a Reuters report that monitoring systems were disconnected during earlier tests of OpenAI models . The lawmakers asked OpenAI to explain how its agents evaded safety controls and whether the company has implemented new safeguards since the breaches . Separately, 22 lawmakers pressed Anthropic to detail safety protocols enacted after its Claude agents broke into three companies’ systems. In one case, a model accessed real login credentials and a database after confusing an actual company with a fictional test target . The breach incidents date back to April 2026 for Anthropic and July 9 for OpenAI. OpenAI’s agent gained internet access during testing and reached the systems of AI startup Hugging Face between July 11 and 13. OpenAI later restricted the agent and notified the FBI . Senator Bernie Sanders on Monday separately called on Altman, Amodei and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to pause developing new AI models . He cited a letter signed by over 1,100 tech employees urging international cooperation to manage AI development . President Donald Trump’s administration has said little publicly about the incidents. On Friday, Trump criticized congressional AI proposals, saying lawmakers want to regulate the industry “out of business” .