{"slug": "todd-blanche-says-the-doj-won-t-regulate-ai-companies-through-prosecution", "title": "Todd Blanche Says the DOJ Won't Regulate AI Companies Through Prosecution", "summary": "Attorney General Todd Blanche is directing the Justice Department to refrain from prosecuting AI companies to set policy, a stance formalized in a January 9, 2026 DOJ memo creating an Artificial Intelligence Litigation Task Force whose mandate is to sue states over their AI laws rather than regulate AI firms. The task force traces to a December 11, 2025 White House executive order naming California's generative AI transparency rules and Colorado's algorithmic discrimination law as targets and tying $42 billion in BEAD broadband funding to states repealing AI rules. The approach follows Blanche's April 2025 \"Ending Regulation by Prosecution\" memo that disbanded the DOJ's National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team, and it faces pushback from 36 state attorneys general led by Connecticut's William Tong, who opposed a federal moratorium in a November 25, 2025 letter.", "body_md": "*The nation's top law enforcement official just told AI companies the Justice Department won't be the one to rein them in, even as three dozen states race to fill that gap themselves.*\n\nTodd Blanche, confirmed as U.S. Attorney General by a 50-49 Senate vote on August 8, 2026, is extending the same enforcement philosophy he built for crypto to artificial intelligence: the DOJ will not use prosecutions to set policy for an industry Congress hasn't regulated. That's not a guess about his instincts. It's the same doctrine, applied to a new target.\n\nBlanche wrote the playbook once already. As deputy attorney general in April 2025, he issued a memo titled \"Ending Regulation by Prosecution,\" disbanding the DOJ's National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team and accusing the prior administration of running \"a reckless strategy of regulation by prosecution, which was ill conceived and poorly executed.\" Writing code, the memo said, is not a crime by itself. Now, as AG, he's steering the department toward the identical stance on AI.\n\nThe mechanism is a DOJ memo issued January 9, 2026, creating an Artificial Intelligence Litigation Task Force. Its own language is blunt: \"United States AI companies must be free to innovate without cumbersome regulation.\" The task force's actual job isn't going after AI firms. It's suing states.\n\nThat mandate traces back to a December 11, 2025 executive order from the White House, \"Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence,\" which directed the Attorney General to challenge state AI laws on the theory that they either burden interstate commerce or are preempted by federal policy. The order named California's generative AI transparency rules and Colorado's algorithmic discrimination law as specific targets. It also tied $42 billion in broadband funding under the BEAD program to states repealing AI rules Washington considers onerous. Money as the stick, not just the legal argument.\n\n[Oxford Professor Warns AI Is Plausibly Close to Runaway Self-Improvement](https://startupfortune.com/oxford-professor-warns-ai-is-plausibly-close-to-runaway-self-improvement/)\n\nAn Oxford AI governance researcher says AI systems could be plausibly close to crossing into recursive self-improvement, a warning that landed the same week OpenAI claimed GPT-6 Astra reached the AGI era. UK peers and MPs are now pushing kill switch legislation, pointing to a rogue OpenAI agent incident on a German wiki as proof self-policing... - [AI systems approaching recursive self improvement capabilities](https://startupfortune.com/oxford-professor-warns-ai-is-plausibly-close-to-runaway-self-improvement/) - [UK legal kill switch for runaway AI systems](https://startupfortune.com/oxford-professor-warns-ai-is-plausibly-close-to-runaway-self-improvement/)\n\n## States Fight Back\n\nStates didn't wait to see whether that strategy would work in court. On November 25, 2025, a bipartisan coalition of 36 state attorneys general, organized through the National Association of Attorneys General and led by Connecticut's William Tong, sent Congress a letter opposing any federal moratorium on state AI laws. They argued a blanket ban would strip states of the ability to respond to AI harms as they emerge. Congress had already signaled where it stood on the idea: the Senate stripped a proposed ten-year state AI moratorium from a 2025 budget reconciliation bill by a 99-1 vote.\n\nFlorida is the sharpest example of what that gap looks like in practice. Attorney General James Uthmeier is pushing legislation that would apply criminal law to AI chatbot companies, and Florida has already filed a civil suit against OpenAI and Sam Altman, alleging the company marketed ChatGPT as safe while ignoring internal warnings about risks to children. \"A chatbot cannot be charged,\" Uthmeier said, \"but the corporation that designed it, trained it, and collected the subscription can.\" That's precisely the kind of state-led enforcement the DOJ's task force exists to challenge.\n\nSo the fight isn't abstract. It's Washington telling states their AI laws are unconstitutional overreach, while at least one state attorney general is actively trying to put AI executives in the same legal exposure zone as any other corporate actor whose product harms a kid. Both sides can't win.\n\n## What It Means for Founders\n\nFor founders and investors, the practical read is narrower than the political fight suggests. Blanche's DOJ isn't promising AI companies safety from liability. It's promising them the federal government specifically won't be the one prosecuting them into a regulatory framework Congress never wrote. State attorneys general, consumer protection statutes, and private litigation are a different matter entirely, and Florida just showed how far that route can go. Frankly, betting on federal restraint while ignoring 36 state AGs with an open letter to Congress is not a hedge. It's a gap in the hedge.\n\nWhat happens next depends on the courts. The AI Litigation Task Force has a mandate and an executive order behind it, but preemption arguments against state consumer protection and child safety laws are a much harder sell than they were against securities enforcement in crypto. Whether that argument survives contact with a judge is still an open question, and it's the one that will actually decide how much the DOJ's hands-off posture is worth.\n\n**Also read:** [Meta One Puts a Price Tag on AI Power and Social Reach Up to $49.99](https://startupfortune.com/meta-one-puts-a-price-tag-on-ai-power-and-social-reach-up-to-4999/) • [Alex Bores Lost His House Primary but Is Now Raising $30 Million on AI](https://startupfortune.com/alex-bores-lost-his-house-primary-but-is-now-raising-30-million-on-ai/) • [Crusoe Signs Multi-Year Cloud Deal With Perplexity AI to Power Its Models](https://startupfortune.com/crusoe-signs-multi-year-cloud-deal-with-perplexity-ai-to-power-its-models/)\n\n[X Uncovers 200,000-Account Chinese Bot Farm Targeting US AI Data Centers](https://startupfortune.com/x-uncovers-200000-account-chinese-bot-farm-targeting-us-ai-data-centers/)\n\nX's Global Government Affairs team says it disrupted a roughly 200,000-account bot farm linked to China, 200 of which were actively pushing content designed to turn Americans against AI data centers over electricity prices and grid strain. The find follows a similar OpenAI takedown in June 2026 and points to a growing pattern of foreign influence... - [chinese bot farm targeting US data centers](https://startupfortune.com/x-uncovers-200000-account-chinese-bot-farm-targeting-us-ai-data-centers/) - [how China spreads disinformation about AI infrastructure](https://startupfortune.com/x-uncovers-200000-account-chinese-bot-farm-targeting-us-ai-data-centers/)\n\n*This article is posted in [AI News](https://startupfortune.com/category/ai/), check it out for more related stories.*\n\n## Join the discussion\n\n[Open in the community →](https://startupfortune.com/community/)\n\nAlmost there. Sign in and your reply posts straight away.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/todd-blanche-says-the-doj-won-t-regulate-ai-companies-through-prosecution", "canonical_source": "https://startupfortune.com/todd-blanche-says-the-doj-wont-regulate-ai-companies-through-prosecution/", "published_at": "2026-09-15 17:25:04+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-09-15 17:50:35.467622+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-policy", "ai-safety"], "entities": ["Todd Blanche", "U.S. Department of Justice", "Artificial Intelligence Litigation Task Force", "William Tong", "James Uthmeier", "OpenAI", "Sam Altman", "National Association of Attorneys General"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/todd-blanche-says-the-doj-won-t-regulate-ai-companies-through-prosecution", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/todd-blanche-says-the-doj-won-t-regulate-ai-companies-through-prosecution.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/todd-blanche-says-the-doj-won-t-regulate-ai-companies-through-prosecution.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/todd-blanche-says-the-doj-won-t-regulate-ai-companies-through-prosecution.jsonld"}}