Senators Kim and Hagerty Lead Colleagues in Introducing Bill to Protect American AI Technology from Foreign Attacks

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senator Andy Kim (D-N.J.), Ranking Member of the Senate Banking Subcommittee on National Security and International Trade and Finance and Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN), along with Senate Banking Chairman Tim Scott (R-SC) and Senator Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), introduced the Blocking Large-Scale Adversarial Distillation Efforts (BLADE) Act of 2026, a bipartisan bill to deter malign foreign actors from stealing the proprietary capabilities of America’s frontier AI companies. “The BLADE Act safeguards both our competitive edge against China and our national security at the same time. As we continue to set the global standard for innovation and unlock new opportunity through AI, it’s critical we have these tools to deter direct attacks on U.S. AI models and maintain as large a lead as possible over our competitors and adversaries,” said Senator Kim. “As the United States must remain at the forefront of competitiveness in artificial intelligence, we cannot allow our adversaries to steal the intellectual property of America’s top AI companies and thereby threaten U.S. national security and economic security,” said Senator Hagerty. “The BLADE Act will expose and punish foreign entities that conduct hostile distillation campaigns against our frontier AI companies. Our nation must counter malign actors who seek to subvert our nation’s leadership and innovation in artificial intelligence.” Recent news reports have detailed the large-scale use of “model extraction attacks” by Chinese entities to distill the unique competitive advantages of America’s top AI models. Such foreign model extraction attacks—which typically circumvent technical controls, use fraudulent or unauthorized credentials, and violate terms of use in order to harvest proprietary capabilities from U.S. models without the owner’s permission—evade U.S. export controls and threaten U.S. economic security and national security. To deter unauthorized and illicit foreign model extraction attacks, the bipartisan BLADE Act would direct the Executive Branch to identify and publicly expose foreign entities behind these malign activities, coordinate with industry to improve detection, and authorize the imposition of Commerce Department export controls and Treasury Department financial sanctions against these foreign entities. “As America’s AI technologies become more advanced, we face new threats from China and other foreign adversaries trying to reproduce them,” said Senator Cortez Masto. “We cannot allow the Chinese Communist Party to steal our companies’ hard work and innovation. America can and will remain dominant in the race to develop cutting-edge AI technologies.” “From startups in South Carolina to companies across the country, American innovators are building the technologies that will shape the future, and the Chinese Communist Party and other foreign adversaries should not be allowed to steal that work. Industrial-scale distillation attacks are unacceptable, and the BLADE Act gives the Commerce Department the tools to expose and punish bad actors targeting American AI models, protect our national security, and keep America ahead in the global AI race. I’m proud to join Senators Hagerty and Kim in defending American ingenuity and holding our adversaries accountable,” said Senator Scott. The BLADE Act builds on Senator Kim’s continued work to safeguard American global competitiveness and national security. In April, Senator Kim co-led the introduction of the bipartisan MATCH Act to modernize U.S. export controls and ensure adversaries cannot buy “chokepoint” semiconductor manufacturing equipment (SME) technology from the United States or our partners that they cannot build themselves. He also recently introduced the bipartisan Export Control Reform Act of 2018 (ECRA) Penalty Increase Act to strengthen penalties for individuals and companies that violate U.S. export control laws. Learn more about Senator Kim’s work to advance a resilience-focused foreign policy agenda here. ###