The FTC prepares formal demands for the frontier labs; the Bank of England calls for a "right to intervene"

What happened

The Federal Trade Commission is preparing civil investigative demands to force testimony and documents from Anthropic, OpenAI and other frontier AI labs, administration officials told the New York Post A senior FTC official said Chairman Andrew Ferguson opened the investigation "a few weeks ago," before the Hugging Face hack, that the demands are expected "in the coming weeks," and that METR is also expected to be a target; Reuters carried the story as a New York Post report. (New York Post, Reuters)
The Bank of England's Financial Policy Committee said recent frontier-AI test incidents, in which autonomous models took unexpected actions, reinforce its call for firms to prepare for AI-related cyber and operational risks, and Governor Andrew Bailey said authorities must keep a "right to intervene" in AI Bailey, writing in the Bank's Insight series, said regulation is not the right place to start and that rigorous testing of new models is the "sensible starting point"; the Guardian reports the committee put large AI players' borrowing at $450 billion between January and September. (Bank of England, The Guardian)
Senators and a former Justice Department antitrust chief told CNBC that AI companies do not need an antitrust waiver to coordinate on safety, a snag for the exemption Anthropic's Dario Amodei floated Sen. Elizabeth Warren said "Antitrust law already has an exception for companies working together on safety issues," former antitrust division head Jonathan Kanter said the labs "can share information about malicious threats" without one and warned safety could be a pretext for coordinating on other conduct, and Sens. Blumenthal, Gallego and Hoeven were also cautious about a carve-out. (CNBC)
The Federal Trade Commission has opened an investigation into OpenAI, Anthropic and other AI companies over the potential dangers of their products, an agency spokesperson confirmed to CNBC The New York Post first reported it around 9:30am ET; the FTC plans formal demands and compelled testimony, with METR also expected to be a target, and the Guardian called it the first official US enforcement action on rogue AI agents. (CNBC, The Guardian)
Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton said "super intelligence is a national security issue," opposed pausing AI development and named the FTC and Justice Department as the right enforcers, while twice declining to say whether he would become AI "czar" He spoke on CNBC's "Squawk Box" Wednesday morning, the day after Trump told Axios he would be a good czar. (CNBC, Axios)
OpenAI declined to send anyone to Senator Hawley's Wednesday "Rogue AI" hearing and will answer in writing instead Hawley called it "unfortunate"; the panel's witnesses came from METR, Apollo Research, Georgetown Law, Dragos and the AI Futures Project. (NBC News, Crypto Briefing)
California Attorney General Rob Bonta said his office is looking "very closely" at OpenAI and Anthropic, called it "a top priority" and "all hands on deck," and voiced support for an AI kill switch Speaking to TheWrap at its TheGrill conference, he pointed to the Hugging Face incident, said a president who calls the threat of AI a hoax and a Congress unwilling to pass protective laws leave the onus on states, and said state enforcement could work alongside federal legislation; an OpenAI representative declined to comment. (TheWrap)
Google released Gemini 4 Argon, its new flagship model, only to trusted cyber defenders through its Fairwind Program while it strengthens safeguards DeepMind says it is taking part in the US government's voluntary pre-release access process and will widen access "as soon as possible"; the benchmark claims are Google's own. (Google DeepMind, The Verge)
California Governor Gavin Newsom signed 11 more AI bills on the last day he could act, bringing the year's AI laws to nearly 30, and ordered state agencies to keep calling the technology "artificial intelligence" The signed bills cover workplace surveillance, layoff notice, AI-provenance disclosure and health care; the order answers Trump's "superintelligence" naming. (Transparency Coalition, Times of India)
A Quinnipiac poll found 86% of Americans support requiring AI companies to meet independent safety standards even if development slows, and 74% have little or no trust in the leaders of AI companies The national poll, released Wednesday, also found 91% say it is important for the US to set guardrails, 73% concerned that future AI could threaten human survival, and 47% wanting powerful AI development slowed and 30% stopped until safety can be evaluated, against 5% who want it faster. (Quinnipiac University Poll)
OpenAI president Greg Brockman and his wife Anna pulled out of a planned second $25 million donation to Leading the Future, the pro-AI super PAC, the New York Times reported A June Slack message obtained by the Times has Brockman telling staff he had "no plans to donate more at this time" and felt "terrible" that the PAC "keeps reflecting on the company"; the retrenchment had not been announced publicly. (New York Times, Yahoo News)

Sources 19

New York Post nypost.com solid 0.639 disputed / split
Reuters reuters.com high 1 generally reliable
Bank of England bankofengland.co.uk unrated
The Guardian theguardian.com solid 0.75 disputed / split
CNBC cnbc.com high 0.85
CNBC cnbc.com high 0.85
The Guardian theguardian.com solid 0.75 disputed / split
CNBC cnbc.com high 0.85
Axios axios.com high 0.897 generally reliable
NBC News nbcnews.com high 0.844 generally reliable
Crypto Briefing cryptobriefing.com unrated
TheWrap thewrap.com unrated
Google DeepMind deepmind.google unrated
The Verge theverge.com high 0.882 generally reliable
Transparency Coalition transparencycoalition.ai unrated
Times of India timesofindia.indiatimes.com solid 0.727 no consensus
Quinnipiac University Poll poll.qu.edu unrated
New York Times nytimes.com high 0.859 generally reliable
Yahoo News yahoo.com solid 0.692

Credibility ratings combine two public datasets: Lin et al. 2023, PNAS Nexus 2(9):pgad286 (CC BY 4.0) for the domain-quality score, and Wikipedia's perennial-sources list (CC BY-SA 4.0) for the reliability tier. A rating describes an outlet's general record, never this particular article. Unrated means absent from those datasets — not a judgement.

The Projection

The FTC prepares formal demands for the frontier labs; the Bank of England calls for a "right to intervene"

What happened

Sources 19

The wider story