Maria Cantwell
Role at the time: United States senator speaking on the Senate floor
Defended or excused
Statement summary
Cantwell called on the Senate to reject industry self-governance and build federal infrastructure combining strong standards, independent testing and safeguards.
“We need our colleagues to say, ‘Stop with saying the industry can do what it wants’ and let’s put together the infrastructure at the federal level that not only has strong federal standards, but also has independent testing and real safeguards for the American people.”
Read the official statement (opens in a new tab)Ranking Member Cantwell Floor Speech on AI Risks and the Need for Strong Federal GuardrailsTranscript of the September 15 Senate floor speech.
Official transcript published by the Senate Commerce Committee's Democratic office. The same quotation appears independently in Roll Call's September 15 report.
Why we used this label
The case proposition is that Washington should impose stronger safeguards on frontier AI. Cantwell supports it expressly, calling for federal standards and independent testing rather than industry self-regulation.