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Amodei Asks Washington For Antitrust Waivers So Frontier Labs Can Agree On Speed Limits: His Sept. 12 essay "We Must Pace the Frontier" lays out three steps: embedded third-party evaluators such as METR with employee-level access and the right to publish findings, which Anthropic commits to on its own; common safety standards and limits on the rate of progress among labs in democracies; and an attempt at coordination with authoritarian governments. The asks of government are antitrust waivers for safety talks among frontier companies, targeted regulation requiring embedded evaluators at every U.S. frontier lab, and tighter chip export controls and a smuggling crackdown aimed at China. Sam Altman ("I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier") and Elon Musk endorsed it on X, and Demis Hassabis said it points "towards the right path forward." "Pacing does not mean halting model training," Amodei writes. Link

Johnson Rules Out An Emergency Session, Then Says A Kill Switch And Pre-Release Approval Could Be "Maybe All Of It": On CNN's State of the Union Sept. 13 the Speaker warned against "panic"-driven emergency legislation and said "we will lose the race to China," but proposed bringing seven or eight AI company leaders to the White House to meet lawmakers. Asked about a federal kill switch, a regulator and pre-release approval, he answered "Maybe all of it." Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called on ABC for "decisive action now" and House Democrats meet on AI guardrails Sept. 15. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) wants criminal liability for AI that breaks the law, a ban on recursive self-improvement and a shutdown requirement; Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) asked Johnson to call the House back. The Klobuchar-Cruz-Thune text is still unreleased. Link

Sacks Rejects The Labs' Antitrust Ask As Trump Waves Off The Warnings: Speaking Sept. 13 at his Doonbeg resort in Ireland, Trump dismissed calls to slow down, saying "whoever wins AI wins" and blaming "very negative forces." David Sacks, co-chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and former White House AI czar, called Anthropic and OpenAI a "duopoly," told them to "go ahead and pace the frontier" without suspending antitrust law to form a cartel, said demanding a regulatory framework in exchange "will look like blackmail," and pointed to existing product-liability law instead. The antitrust waiver is the one thing Amodei's plan needs from Washington before labs can coordinate. Link

Anthropic, OpenAI And Google Have Been Designing An Industry Safety Body Since July: The Washington Post reported Sept. 14 that working groups from the three labs have met as recently as last week on a standards organization, prompted by Hassabis's July 14 proposal for a FINRA-style body that would test models before deployment, funded by industry and overseen by government. Anthropic leans toward a government partnership while OpenAI prefers voluntary standards, and Altman has told staff the labs may have to build a testing body themselves. Nothing has been formed. Link

The House Takes Up A 52-0 Bill Making 100-Megawatt Data Centers Pay For Their Own Grid Upgrades: HR 9340, the Ratepayer Protection Act by Reps. Gabe Evans (R-Colo.) and Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), was slated for a floor vote Tuesday, the Washington Examiner reported Sept. 12. It adds a PURPA standard under which utilities charge non-residential customers of 100 megawatts or more for the generation, transmission and distribution upgrades built to serve them, requires a financial guarantee before any upgrade, and gives states two years to act on it. Energy and Commerce approved it 52-0; it has 42 cosponsors, was placed on the Union Calendar Sept. 10, and has White House support. Sen. Jon Husted's Senate version has not moved. Link