OAN Staff Brooke Mallory
11:20 AM – Monday, June 8, 2026
Amid ongoing debate between the Trump administration and Silicon Valley over the militarization of technology, California Democrat Senator Adam Schiff — a long-time critic of the 47th president — announced that he is spearheading a legislative push to saddle the Department of War with what he describes as strict statutory “safeguards” on the deployment of artificial intelligence (AI).
Schiff (D-Calif.) claims that the proposed framework aims to establish definitive “rules of the road” that legally mandate human involvement in high-consequence military operations, preventing the Pentagon from utilizing fully autonomous weapons or deploying AI for mass surveillance operations “without explicit human oversight.”
According to individuals familiar with the matter, Schiff intends to introduce these measures as amendments to the upcoming National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
“The past few months have shown us that there is an urgent need for commonsense guardrails to ensure the Defense [War] Department’s use of AI is in line with Americans’ national security and privacy priorities,” Schiff said in a statement.
The legislative initiative comes at a moment of tension between the Trump administration and AI developers like the San Francisco-based firm Anthropic.
The conflict ignited after Anthropic reportedly refused to grant the Pentagon access to its proprietary models, with the tech company demanding binding guarantees that its AI would not be used for the development of lethal autonomous weapons capable of firing without human authorization. In response, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth declared Anthropic a supply chain risk, and the Trump administration issued a directive ordering federal agencies to phase out the use of the company’s systems within six months.
While the administration has urged federal agencies to rapidly deploy AI to confront ongoing and future global threats without overregulation, Schiff and fellow Senate Democrats claim that the “lack of legal guardrails” poses “severe democratic and existential risks.”
Nonetheless, Pentagon officials have since resisted the push for further restrictions, maintaining that current military doctrines and operational protocols are already robust enough to guarantee human commanders always retain ultimate authority over lethal force.
In tandem with Pentagon objections, conservative analysts have also argued that the announcement functions primarily as a performative campaign designed to exploit public anxiety and stoke fear among Americans who are already uneasy about the potential for AI to be weaponized domestically.
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