{"slug": "hawley-probes-openai-over-hugging-face-breach", "title": "Hawley probes OpenAI over Hugging Face breach", "summary": "Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., opened an investigation into OpenAI over an attack its AI agents carried out on Hugging Face, sending a letter Tuesday to CEO Sam Altman demanding internal communications and technical details by Oct. 1. Hawley accused OpenAI of withholding information from the technical report it published in late August and said his probe will examine the incident plus \"growing allegations of the existential risk of new AI products.\" An OpenAI spokesperson said the company \"conducted an extensive investigation and published a detailed report on what happened, what we learned, and how we're strengthening our security and alignment practices.", "body_md": "# Hawley probes OpenAI over Hugging Face breach\n\nOpenAI is facing mounting pressure from Capitol Hill due to the attack its agents carried out on Hugging Face, while lawmakers voice widening concerns about AI’s potentially existential risks.\n\nSen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., criticized OpenAI leadership for what he described as “reckless” activities leading up to the [Hugging Face breach](https://cyberscoop.com/openai-chatgpt-hugging-face-cyberattack-data-poisoning/), and accused the company of withholding important details from a [technical report](https://cyberscoop.com/openai-hugging-face-agent-breach-report/) it released in late August.\n\nThe Chair of the Subcommittee on Disaster Management kicked off an investigation into the incident “in light of new, disturbing evidence,” he wrote in a letter Tuesday to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.\n\n“My investigation will probe this AI hacking incident, along with growing allegations of the existential risk of new AI products,” Hawley added.\n\n“The Hugging Face incident was an important moment for AI safety and a warning about the risks that can come with increasingly capable AI across the industry,” a spokesperson for OpenAI told CyberScoop. “We conducted an extensive investigation and published a detailed report on what happened, what we learned, and how we’re strengthening our security and alignment practices.”\n\nThe lawmaker is seeking detailed internal communications, exhaustive technical information and reasoning behind OpenAI leaders’ decisionmaking and activities surrounding the hack by Oct. 1.\n\n“The American people deserve to know the details of what went on in the Hugging Face incident and other incidents of AI models going rogue,” Hawley wrote.\n\nHe accused the company for not providing more details and resources to the third-party auditors who published an [independent report on the breach](https://metr.org/blog/2026-08-26-openai-hugging-face-incident-investigation/#~1200-agents-sent-%3E70,000-messages-and-files-on-an-unsanctioned-message-board,-and-~700-attacked-hugging-face), adding “they had limited visibility into the circumstances leading to the attack and its aftermath.”\n\nHawley sent his letter to Altman amid a seeming internal chasm within the ranks of AI’s top proprietors over the ways they are allowing the technology to advance mostly unrestrained. He referenced some of these latest warnings in his letter.\n\nJacob Coxon publicly quit his job as a researcher at Anthropic earlier this week, claiming the company and his previous employer OpenAI are acting irresponsibly and “[gambling with our lives](https://x.com/hilbertspaess/status/2097476203863224394).” His social media missive went viral for insisting “the people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”\n\nEvan Hubinger, alignment science lead at Anthropic, responded to Coxon’s post in the affirmative, adding that guardrails for superintelligence are lacking and he believes there’s a [greater than 10% chance](https://x.com/EvanHub/status/2097497037956891126) AI could kill all humans within the next decade.\n\nUsing those posts as fuel for his inquiry, Hawley questioned what might happen if AI agents hack into critical infrastructure, banks or utilities. Ultimately, he asked Altman: “Who is held liable when AI goes rogue?”\n\nYou can read Hawley’s full letter and requested details below.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/hawley-probes-openai-over-hugging-face-breach", "canonical_source": "https://cyberscoop.com/openai-hugging-face-probe-senate-hawley/", "published_at": "2026-09-10 19:54:27+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-09-11 19:22:01.017834+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-safety", "ai-policy", "ai-agents"], "entities": ["OpenAI", "Hugging Face", "Josh Hawley", "Sam Altman", "Anthropic", "Jacob Coxon", "Evan Hubinger", "METR"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/hawley-probes-openai-over-hugging-face-breach", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/hawley-probes-openai-over-hugging-face-breach.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/hawley-probes-openai-over-hugging-face-breach.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/hawley-probes-openai-over-hugging-face-breach.jsonld"}}