Andy Kim

“I want the Senate to pass this bill to set safety rules for artificial intelligence. We cannot just trust tech companies to police themselves. Right now, no one even knows how many safety problems these companies have had. We need real rules, safe testing spaces, and a safety board to keep this technology under control.”

“Madam President, I thank my colleagues Senator Warner and Senator Schatz. This is really an invitation to all of our colleagues to be able to join us in this moment because this is a call from the American people to address their worries, to avoid disaster, and to give them a sense of stability and predictability. Yes, this effort we are putting forward today is not going to fix all of the problems; it is not going to avoid all of the pitfalls, but it is a start, and that is what the American people are looking for. They are looking for a start. They are looking for action that we are taking not just in words but in recognizing, yes, innovation without control just leads to chaos and leads to unpredictability. That is something that we need to make sure we are meeting at this moment to ensure that the American people have control over the incredible strides that we are seeing on AI. Now, control can’t be built on faith and half measures. Just yesterday, we saw again OpenAI saying that they are not going to release their newest model Astra because of security concerns. We have seen other major labs take some steps to mitigate. That is progress, but the stakes are too high for this to be just voluntary that big corporations take the right action just because it is the right thing to do. When I was working in national security, the starting point of every conversation was, ``What is the magnitude of the problem that we are facing?’’ and then to be able to work backward from there to understand what the magnitude is of the solution needed to actually address that problem. Well, when I did a townhall 2 weeks ago, I had a constituent come up and ask me--because I was talking about the Hugging Face incident or some of the other news that we had seen of rogue AI agents breaking out. This one constituent asked me, he said: Well, how many times has this happened? How many times? Are we documenting it? How many times have we actually seen this? Look, the answer that I had to give, truthfully, was that we didn’t know. Even still, today, we are standing here on the floor of the Senate, and we don’t know how many of these types of instances have happened. I will be honest with you, I don’t think the top AI companies fully know the total number of incidents and other challenges that they have faced. So when they have the question: What is the magnitude of the problem we are trying to solve, the answer right now is that we don’t know. That is scary, that is worrisome, and that is something we should work incredibly hard to be able to address. Do we know just how much the move toward full recursive self- improvement is going to magnify these problems? We don’t know yet, which is why we are trying to set out, with the effort today, to recognize that the stakes are too high and that control comes from creating efforts like an AI safety board or in establishing more secure sandboxes for testing and other types of standards. Control is necessary because we need to ensure that the technology does not outpace safety and common sense. I am grateful, again, to be working with my colleagues here and, again, to be, hopefully, working with all of our colleagues together on this shared agenda. That is what the American people are not just asking of us but are demanding of us to be able to do so that this bill can be part of a comprehensive approach that will help us maintain control and avoid the chaos that no American wants to see. With that, I yield to the Senator from Virginia.”

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“I want the Senate to pass this resolution to end the war in Iran. Donald Trump started this war without Congress, and it is hurting our country. It has killed at least 19 American troops and cost billions of dollars. It drives up gas prices and makes our military less ready. We need to follow the Constitution and bring our troops home.”

“Mr. President, I rise today as Donald Trump continues to wage a war in Iran in our name, on our dime, but without our say--a war that is nearly 7 months old, a war that has cost Americans billions, a war that seemingly has no end in sight but that Congress has the authority to end. The Senate has just returned to the Capitol after over a month back home, and in that time, Americans have continued to be loud and clear at townhalls, at protests, and in letters and phone calls to our offices. They are sick and tired of this reckless and expensive war. They are sick and tired of this war, and they expect us to do something about it. This is a moment for us to step up and show the American people that we are listening and we are ready to take action. Democrats have taken action. We have come to this Chamber 11 times, in the past 208 days, to try to bring this war to an end. I have been encouraged to see some of my colleagues join from across the aisle to do the right thing and join us. It is not just the right thing to do; it is the right thing to do right now. It is about standing up for our Constitution--that this war, which Donald Trump said would end in about a month, has lasted over six times as long; this war, which Donald Trump wouldn’t even admit to being a war, has resulted in damage done to our national security and the spread of chaos across the Middle East and the world; and this war, which Donald Trump said was worth the cost, keeps costing the American people more and more. So what has it cost us? It has cost us American lives. We have lost at least 19 servicemembers, brave men and women; over 750 injured. It has cost us economic security. Inflation is up--gas prices, just filling up the grocery carts as well. These are costs that Donald Trump is bearing upon the American people. It is costing each and every one of our American families hard- earned taxpayer dollars. A report last week by the Congressional Budget Office showed that the war has cost nearly $40 billion in the first 4 months alone. It has cost us our readiness and our ability to keep Americans safe from global threats. These are the things that we are seeing that are making us weaker and why it is that we need to end this now. So with this vote today, we can alleviate the cost of the war. I want to talk a little bit more about why alleviating this cost is so important to the people we represent, to our national security, and to our future. When we hear from so many of our constituents, when I hear from a woman back home in New Jersey, she is talking about just the challenges that she is facing raising her family, about the challenges that she is seeing as gas prices continue to skyrocket, as mortgage rates are hitting higher and higher. She paused and she looked at me, she said-- all of this that is happening, the Iran war, all these different actions--she said: But what about us? What are we supposed to do? And her question is one that all of us should be considering here in the Chamber. What about the American people? What are they getting out of this? Well, they are getting footed the bill. They are getting footed the sacrifice. They are the ones that are bearing this brunt. When we have a third of Americans already unable to handle a $400 emergency, that is not theoretical, that is their life right now. We see it as we see estimates already of gas prices going up so much that it is--what?--over $115 billion more than American families have had to bear, nearly $900 per household more since the start of this war. And over and over again, is this making us safer and more secure? Very clearly, no. And we see that just with the continued attacks, the continued violence, the spread of this now with Saudi Arabia, the Houthis. We are seeing this all over the place through the Middle East. I have worked in war zones; I have worked in the Middle East as a State Department officer, as a diplomat; and I have seen where this heads. Chaos is not a negotiating tactic. Trump is simply in over his head here. The entire administration is in over their head, and, again, the American people are the ones bearing this cost. As we talk about that cost to our future, the war has cost a lot of money. I have shared with you the costs at the gas pump. We see how much we have had to pay in the past for the previous wars of Iraq and Afghanistan. We do not want that going forward. I literally just yesterday celebrated the birthday of one of my sons. I do not want him and his generation to bear the burdens of these reckless decisions made by Trump. This is something we need to make sure we are pushing forward on. I think a lot about that woman in New Jersey that I mentioned. I wonder how she is holding up since I last talked to her, how she is bearing the cost of this war. And when we recess here shortly, I want to be able to go back to her and tell her what I heard, tell her what I tried to do, tell her what we tried to do here in the Senate. I wanted to tell her that I did everything that I could so she could breathe a little easier, be able to support her family in the way that she wants, that we--Democrats and Republicans--were able to come together and recognize that the cost to the American people is too great and that we need to work together to stop this war. So please, I ask my colleagues here at the Senate: Join me. Let’s pass this resolution and do the right thing for the American people; do the right thing for our Constitution; do the right thing for our servicemembers in harm’s way; do the right thing by ending this war. I yield the floor.”

“I am asking the Senate to let these ten senators speak for set amounts of time.”

“Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following Senators be permitted to speak: Kim for up to 8 minutes, Schiff for up to 8 minutes, Moreno for up to 20 minutes, Slotkin for up to 5 minutes, Merkley for up to 10 minutes, Murphy for up to 8 minutes, Baldwin for up to 5 minutes, Welch for up to 2 minutes, Kaine for up to 5 minutes, and Klobuchar for up to 5 minutes.”