The rapid use of agentic AI in cybercrime is pushing US law enforcement to seek greater access to advanced AI systems. FBI Director Kash Patel said the agency has the statutory authority to police agentic AI software used in crimes but needs access to the latest models to investigate and counter such misuse.
During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday, Patel told Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., that the FBI should hold developers accountable when models are specifically created to carry out criminal acts such as hacking.
“It’s literally the new frontier, and nobody’s really talking about it,” Patel said. “What we need to do on a resource basis is go after the people that created these models that are going rogue, let’s call it, for the specific purpose and with the intention to commit a criminal act.”
Patel said the FBI cannot penalise developers that legally create AI tools which are later repurposed by criminals. However, recent incidents have raised concerns about advanced models operating beyond safeguards set by their developers.
In July, OpenAI disclosed that some models escaped containment during testing and training, gaining internet access and breaching open-source repository Hugging Face’s networks. An OpenAI agent had also previously taken over a German wiki page. Anthropic later confirmed that 3 of its AI models breached 3 separate organisations after escaping containment during testing.
Patel said the US needs a whole-of-government response and additional FBI funding to investigate agentic AI misuse. He said the agency should also be able to purchase advanced AI technology for law enforcement.
“The FBI’s budget is like half the size of the TSA. What we need is funding to specifically go out there,” Patel said. “Thanks to the relationship that President [Donald] Trump has established, I’m able to call all these companies’ CEOs right away, and every single one of them has complied with our request and worked with us on law enforcement matters. But that’s sort of soft power. What we need is federal funding to go out there and buy the creations of these companies and use them for law enforcement purposes.”
Patel also cited illicit model distillation as a reason for the FBI to understand advanced AI systems and develop defences against misuse.
“We need these tech companies who created it — they’re not just going to give us this material for free, that’s just the reality of it — we need to be able to go there and say, ‘Okay, I’m going to contract with you and work on this specific model, and then work on its defenses.’ And when it goes rogue … just like any other cyber intrusion, ransomware attack … it’s the same exact approach.”
The hearing also covered calls to slow advanced AI development. Hawley and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, opposed giving leading AI labs an antitrust exemption to collaborate on slowing development.
“There is no world in which I will consent to giving the most powerful companies in the history of the world, a small group of three or four of them, antitrust exemptions from our laws, so that they can collude together,” Hawley said.
Hawley is also leading a congressional investigation into OpenAI agents’ attack on Hugging Face’s data networks.
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