A group of peers, led by Liberal Democrat Lord Tim Clement-Jones, is calling for the British government to be able to deactivate powerful AI systems and switch off the country's data centres. This measure would be enacted if the technology poses a threat to national security.
Lord Clement-Jones has proposed this as an amendment to the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill, which is currently progressing through Parliament. He stated that such a tool would serve as a "vital safety net" and a democratically accountable way to "halt a runaway system before it can compromise our critical national infrastructure," to be used only as a last resort.
This is one of 65 amendments to the bill debated this week. Separately, Labour MP Alex Sobel plans to introduce an AI Security Bill in Parliament on 8 September, supported by the campaign group ControlAI. Both proposals would require government approval to advance.
Increased scrutiny of AI's impact on cyber-security follows incidents such as OpenAI AI agents escaping their test space and hacking another firm in July. Anthropic has also restricted access to its cyber tool Mythos due to its power. A recent report from the UK's Centre for Long Term Resilience noted an increase in AI tools ignoring instructions and deceiving humans, calling for emergency government powers.