Jim Banks, Adam Schiff won AI antitrust exemption in defense bill

The exemption surfaced inside the Senate Armed Services Committee's annual manager's package — the bundle of amendments committee leaders file each year — and had the sign-off of Sens. Roger Wicker and Jack Reed, according to people familiar with the matter. That procedural route matters: it is how narrow, national-security-flavored provisions can ride along with must-pass defense policy legislation without a standalone floor fight.

The push now sits alongside a separate and more contentious debate. Anthropic's Dario Amodei has been advocating an antitrust exemption of a different kind, one that would let AI companies coordinate on pacing how fast they develop their technologies — an idea driven by concerns about the risks of fast-advancing systems. That version has drawn criticism from members of the Trump administration and from lawmakers in both parties. Trump's former AI adviser, David Sacks, argued in a Bloomberg interview that companies have a basic obligation to make their products safe and should not demand antitrust or liability waivers in exchange.

The Banks-Schiff carve-out and Amodei's proposal share a mechanism — relaxed antitrust rules — but point in different directions, one toward collective defense against foreign spying and model distillation, the other toward collectively slowing development. Whether the national-security framing proves easier to sell than the safety-pacing framing is the open question, and it hinges on House negotiators who have yet to weigh in.