Washington, Oct 8 (IANS) A Republican senator has urged the Pentagon to strengthen safeguards against espionage and insider threats at leading artificial intelligence companies, warning that compromised employees could expose sensitive US military applications, steal advanced AI models or sabotage systems used by American forces.
Sen. Jim Banks of Indiana raised the concerns on Wednesday (local time) in a letter to Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, calling for closer cooperation between the government and private AI developers.
Banks said the growing use of advanced AI in military operations had created new vulnerabilities that existing corporate security programmes might not adequately address.
He singled out potential threats linked to China, arguing that Beijing was seeking access to American technological capabilities.
“As the Department relies more on these companies, insider threats in the frontier SI industry are becoming a direct risk to military operations,” Banks wrote, using the administration’s terminology of super intelligence, or SI.
The senator said agreements announced in May with companies including OpenAI and Google were intended to accelerate the deployment of advanced AI capabilities across the military.
Such partnerships, he said, would become increasingly important as AI models developed stronger capabilities in cyber operations and military planning.
But Banks warned that the same systems could become targets for foreign intelligence operations.
He said a malicious insider with sufficient access could reveal confidential information about military applications, steal model weights or insert software backdoors capable of compromising defence systems.
Banks cited the conviction of a former Google engineer in January on economic espionage charges involving the theft of confidential information about the company’s AI technology for the benefit of China-based businesses.
The senator used the case to illustrate what he described as the risks of allowing sensitive technological assets to become vulnerable to insider activity.
He acknowledged that leading AI companies already maintain internal security programmes but argued that private industry could not adequately address the scale of the threat alone.
“An ongoing conversation between the Department and private industry will be needed to ensure that insider threats are adequately assessed and mitigated,” he wrote.
Banks called for the Pentagon to obtain information from frontier AI developers about their existing counterintelligence measures, the assets they consider most sensitive and the controls governing employee access.
He also sought an assessment of gaps in corporate security programmes and the resources needed to address them.
The senator requested a staff-level briefing covering the principal national security risks, the Pentagon offices responsible for countering insider threats and the additional funding or personnel required.
He said Congress, the Pentagon and the Office of Management and Budget should work together to provide sufficient resources for counterintelligence and threat-reduction efforts.
The letter did not identify a new espionage incident at the companies participating in the military’s AI partnerships. Nor did it announce a new law or binding security requirement.
Instead, Banks proposed closer government oversight and information-sharing arrangements as the military expands its reliance on private developers.
The concerns come amid intensifying US-China competition over advanced computing, AI models and the technologies that could shape future military capabilities.
–IANS
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