Ted Cruz's Campaign to Keep Government Out of AI

Tribune News Service —  U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz recently asked Elon Musk how real the possibility is that machines powered by artificial intelligence will take over the world like in the Terminator movies.

Musk put the odds at "20 percent likely, maybe 10 percent" within the next 10 years — to which Cruz estimated is a risk worth taking if it means the U.S. can beat out China on the technology front.

"My view is if there's going to be killer robots I'd rather they be American killer robots than Chinese," Cruz quipped on his podcast Verdict.

While seemingly lighthearted, the remarks are also emblematic of Cruz's opposition to creating safeguards for a technology that even tech executives admit pose risks ranging from advanced weapons development to mass job losses and personal data theft.

Cruz, chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, which oversees the industry, is at the leading edge of a movement to allow the country's AI companies to grow their technology unfettered. That comes even as members of his own party are working with Democrats to get safeguards in place.

After a setback in blocking state regulations on AI earlier this year, the Texas Republican is now rumored to be working on a more comprehensive bill that would create a federal framework for the industry. And he has found a like-minded ally in President Donald Trump, who announced his "AI Action Plan" earlier this month, which would remove regulations created during Joe Biden's administration while speeding up data center construction and the export of technology abroad.

The details are still under wraps, but tech lobbyists are pushing the government to develop a testing protocol for AI technologies to ensure their own safety. That would provide AI firms a government-backed certification process to build their legitimacy while also allowing them to operate as they see fit.

Cruz has long opposed bipartisan efforts to regulate the industry, including a bill last year by now-Sen. Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., that would have required the National Institute of Standards & Technology to monitor for dangerous AI activity and given the Commerce Department enforcement authority.

In a hearing, Cruz criticized such legislation as the product of far-fetched warnings about the future danger of AI by "wealthy and well-connected AI entrepreneurs and their corporate allies." Among those doomsayers are Musk and OpenAI founder and CEO Sam Altman, who earlier this year warned of a coming "fraud crisis" brought on by AI impersonating people to gain access to their finances.

Thune and other Senate Republicans who have worked with Democrats on AI regulations did not respond to requests for comment.

Earlier this year Cruz again made waves among Republicans when he tried to attach legislation to Trump's tax and spending bill that would have blocked states from putting up guardrails on AI — like Texas and numerous other states already have. The conservative Heritage Foundation opposed the move, calling it a "federal AI power grab."

Cruz declined an interview request for this story. In public and private conversations the senator has prioritized the U.S. being first in developing advanced AI technology, said Brendan Steinhauser, a Republican strategist and AI supporter who heads the Austin-based nonprofit Alliance for Secure AI.

"His thing is we're in one of these scenarios where we have to make a choice, and there's no perfect choice, but we have to beat China," Steinhauser said. "Whether they develop something or we do that leads to catastrophe, we're in the same boat."

Cruz's hands-off approach bears similarity to that of Peter Thiel, the libertarian tech billionaire, who was an early backer of Cruz. He gave more than $250,000 to Cruz's short-lived campaign for Texas attorney general in 2009, and then another $1 million to the Club for Growth, a super PAC that supported Cruz ahead of his runoff election for the Senate in 2012.

Thiel is the co-founder of the data and surveillance firm Palantir, which landed a $10 billion AI contract with the U.S. Army last week. Thiel argued in a speech at Cambridge University last year that regulating AI is an avenue for governments to attain power of a "global totalitarian character."

Thiel doesn't appear to have donated money to Cruz in the years since, at least not directly. Brendan Glavin, director of insights at the watchdog group OpenSecrets, said Thiel has "an ideological agenda that's not strictly motivated by financial or business concerns."

"His views are libertarian generally, and he wants to elect people who are like minded," Glavin said.

Palantir did not respond to a request for comment, and a Cruz spokesperson declined to comment about the senator's relationship with Thiel.

Critics worry that voluntary AI regulations would cede control to the companies developing the technology, at a time when Trump has already ended many safeguards put in the place by the Biden administration.

In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott has been quiet on Cruz's effort to block state AI regulations, but state Sen. Angela Paxton criticized it in June as an attempt to stop the state from enforcing "common-sense protections to protect our kids from things like deepfake AI child pornography and other bipartisan AI regulations."

Cruz himself has been willing to take some steps to regulate the technology, writing legislation that was signed into law this year forcing websites to remove so-called revenge and deepfake pornography, which uses AI to create images of real people in intimate acts.

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