Senate Democrats Draft AI Limits on Autonomous Weapons and Domestic Surveillance

Axios reports that Senate Democrats, led by Sen. Adam Schiff (D‑Calif.), are drafting legislation to codify federal guardrails on the use of artificial intelligence in fully autonomous weapons and domestic mass surveillance, with an eye toward attaching it to this year’s must‑pass National Defense Authorization Act. The move follows a sharp standoff between the Trump administration and AI company Anthropic, which was designated a ‘supply chain risk’ after refusing the Pentagon unrestricted access to its models for uses including mass surveillance of Americans and weapons that fire without human involvement. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has publicly pushed to rapidly embed AI across military operations and is demanding that AI vendors provide unfettered access to their systems, drawing bipartisan criticism — including retiring Republican Sen. Thom Tillis, who called the administration’s handling of Anthropic ‘sophomoric.’ Sen. Mark Kelly (D‑Ariz.) signaled broader support for limits, saying at Brookings that it is reasonable to expect clear boundaries on what AI should and should not be used for in the U.S. military. The fight is emerging as one of the first concrete tests of how Congress will respond to battlefield AI adoption and domestic spying concerns in the Trump administration’s Iran war era, with tech‑policy circles and civil‑liberties advocates on social media warning that whatever language lands in the NDAA could quietly set the rules of engagement for algorithmic warfare and surveillance at home.