US AI Governance and Emerging Threats Bill

Overview

The Artificial Intelligence Governance and Emerging Threats Act, H.R. 10768, is a proposed United States federal bill sponsored by Representative Tom Barrett. It would establish the U.S. Office of Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology Threats within the Executive Office of the President. The proposal places federal artificial intelligence policy and emerging technological risks within a dedicated presidential-level organization. Its central mechanisms are institutional coordination, senior leadership, continuing threat assessment, engagement with external actors, and accountability to Congress.

The bill addresses both risks and opportunities associated with rapidly developing technologies. Its policy concerns include national security, employment, and human dignity, alongside the broader task of developing a cohesive federal approach to artificial intelligence. The proposed office would spearhead federal policy development and implementation concerning AI and other technological risks. As a proposed bill, H.R. 10768 describes a prospective governmental structure rather than an existing operational office established by this instrument. The official sponsor announcement identifies the bill and describes its institutional design.

Institutional Framework

The proposed U.S. Office of Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology Threats would sit within the Executive Office of the President. This placement connects its policy-development and coordination work directly to presidential decision-making. The office would provide a dedicated institutional focus for artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies, bringing together responsibilities that span multiple federal departments and policy fields. Its mission combines the development of federal policy with coordination of implementation, rather than limiting its work to a single sector or agency.

The organizational model draws inspiration from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, particularly its role in coordinating work across institutions. The proposed AI office would similarly support a cohesive approach among federal departments while maintaining a central advisory relationship with the president. The comparison concerns organizational design and interagency coordination. The office's own responsibilities would encompass technological risks, opportunities, and policy implementation across security, economic, intergovernmental, international, and private-sector portfolios.

Leadership and Presidential Advice

A presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed representative would lead the proposed office. The representative would serve as the president's principal adviser on artificial intelligence and emerging technological threats and would serve in the president's Cabinet. This design combines a direct presidential advisory role with a leadership position subject to Senate confirmation. The representative would be responsible for connecting the office's work to presidential priorities and for coordinating a cohesive federal approach across departments.

The representative's duties would include monitoring risks and opportunities associated with AI and other technologies. That responsibility places continuing technological assessment alongside policy coordination and advice. The leadership role also includes regular testimony before Congress, connecting executive-branch coordination with legislative oversight. Presidential advice, federal coordination, ongoing monitoring, and congressional testimony are complementary parts of the proposed position: the representative would lead the office while communicating relevant developments to both the president and Congress.

Deputy Representatives and Policy Portfolios

The bill would provide five Senate-confirmed deputy representatives with distinct responsibilities: intergovernmental coordination, international engagement, private-sector engagement, national security and emerging technology threats, and economic and workforce impacts. The division of responsibilities gives the proposed office an organizing structure for issues that cross governmental boundaries and involve actors outside the federal executive branch. Each portfolio addresses a different dimension of AI governance while contributing to the office's overall policy mission.

Intergovernmental coordination would provide a dedicated focus for relationships among governmental bodies. International engagement would address the external dimension of technology governance, while private-sector engagement would connect the office with nongovernmental technology and business actors. The national-security portfolio would focus on emerging threats, and the economic and workforce portfolio would address technological effects on employment and the economy. Together, the five portfolios combine coordination channels with substantive areas of concern, supporting a structure that considers security risks and economic opportunities within the same presidential office.

Federal Policy Development and Coordination

The proposed office would spearhead federal policy development and implementation concerning artificial intelligence and other technological risks. Its representative would coordinate federal departments to support a cohesive approach. These responsibilities address the cross-cutting nature of AI policy: developments in technology can affect national security, public administration, international relations, businesses, and workers simultaneously. A central office would provide a common institutional point for connecting those concerns to federal policymaking and presidential advice.

The distinction between policy development and implementation is important to the proposal's design. Development concerns the formulation of the federal approach, while implementation concerns carrying that approach into the work of government. Departmental coordination would connect both activities across the federal executive branch. The deputy portfolios would give that coordination identifiable subject areas and engagement channels. The bill's central focus is therefore a governmental governance structure, with leadership and coordination responsibilities organized around the broad consequences of AI and emerging technologies.

National Security and Emerging Threats

National-security threat assessment is a specific function of the proposed structure. The office would coordinate with the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Homeland Security, the intelligence community, and other relevant federal departments and agencies to identify, monitor, and assess emerging national-security threats arising from artificial intelligence and emerging technologies. This function connects technology governance with institutions responsible for defense, homeland security, intelligence, and other relevant federal activities. The official bill PDF describes this coordination responsibility.

Identification, monitoring, and assessment represent connected stages of threat-management work. Identification concerns recognizing relevant threats; monitoring concerns following their development; assessment concerns evaluating their national-security significance. The dedicated deputy portfolio for national security and emerging technology threats reinforces this focus within the office's leadership structure. The representative's broader monitoring responsibilities would also encompass opportunities, allowing the office's overall policy mission to consider beneficial developments alongside threats rather than treating every technological advance solely as a security problem.

Economic, Workforce, and Private-Sector Engagement

Economic and workforce impacts would receive a dedicated deputy representative. This portfolio reflects the proposal's attention to how artificial intelligence and emerging technologies affect employment and the broader economy. Job displacement is one of the sponsor's stated concerns, alongside national security and human dignity. Within the proposed office, economic and workforce matters would form a standing part of the governance structure rather than being treated only as secondary consequences of technological development.

Private-sector engagement would be assigned to a separate deputy representative. This creates a designated institutional channel for engagement with actors outside government whose activities intersect with AI and emerging technology policy. The private-sector portfolio and the economic and workforce portfolio address related but distinct responsibilities: one concerns engagement, while the other concerns substantive impacts. Both would contribute to the office's wider work on risks, opportunities, and federal policy. Their inclusion broadens the proposed institution beyond a solely national-security-oriented body.

International Engagement and Policy Context

International engagement would have its own deputy representative, making the international dimension of AI governance an explicit component of the proposed office. This portfolio would sit alongside domestic coordination, private-sector engagement, national security, and economic and workforce responsibilities. It provides the institutional basis for treating international engagement as a central topic of the bill. The proposal's international component forms part of a domestic federal governance structure centered on presidential advice and policy coordination.

Separately, Representative Barrett advocated cooperation with other nations to negotiate a treaty establishing international AI guardrails in letters to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz. That treaty advocacy is part of the sponsor's broader policy activity, distinct from the bill's proposed deputy portfolio. The sponsor also situated H.R. 10768 alongside separate proposals concerning autonomous weapons, chatbot protections for minors, nuclear-safety risks, health-insurance decisions, veterans' benefits, and data-center transparency and local control. These subjects provide context for the broader legislative agenda surrounding the proposed governance office.

Congressional Accountability and Related Instruments

The representative would testify regularly before Congress on AI developments and threats. This recurring testimony would connect the office's monitoring and coordination work with congressional accountability. Together with presidential appointment and Senate confirmation of the representative and deputy representatives, testimony gives the proposed institution a leadership and oversight structure involving both the executive and legislative branches. The Congressional Record Index 2026 entry lists the Artificial Intelligence Governance and Emerging Threats Act by title.

A separate federal AI policy instrument is Executive Order 14365, Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence, dated December 11, 2025. It addresses a national AI policy framework, scrutiny of state AI laws, and legislative recommendations. H.R. 10768's proposed office, leadership positions, departmental coordination, and congressional testimony should be understood as features of this bill, separately from the executive order's policy framework. The proposed office's intergovernmental and international portfolios likewise belong to its own institutional design.

Proposed Implementation Structure

Governance Responsibilities

Sources and References