Mark Kelly is a US Senator for Arizona and a Democrat. A retired Navy captain and NASA astronaut, he sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee. His documented AI-policy activity concerns congressional oversight of the executive branch's authority to restrict access to frontier models.
Frontier-model access oversight
On August 3, 2026 Kelly cosigned a letter led by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, alongside Sens. Mark Warner, Adam Schiff and Christopher Coons, addressed to six administration officials — Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, OSTP Director Michael Kratsios and National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross (Senate letter on the Administration's approach to limiting access to advanced AI models (Gillibrand, Warner, Kelly, Schiff, Coons, August 2026)).
The letter argues that the administration's "ad hoc and unpredictable approach" to restricting access to frontier AI models undermines U.S. competitiveness and pushes customers toward open-weight models from vendors based in the People's Republic of China, and that "a rigorous, predictable, and competitiveness-enhancing process for evaluating frontier models requires a statutory framework." It recounts the June 12–30, 2026 sequence in which the Commerce Department directed Anthropic to suspend foreign-national access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5, and requests an unclassified response within 30 days to nine enumerated questions on process, legal authority, agency responsibility, third-party expert participation, remedy and rebuttal, and the criteria for imposing and lifting restrictions.
Relationships
- related: Senate letter on the Administration's approach to limiting access to advanced AI models (Gillibrand, Warner, Kelly, Schiff, Coons, August 2026) — the letter he cosigned.
- related: Kirsten Gillibrand, Mark Warner, Adam Schiff — cosigners.
- related: AI Pre-Release Vetting, Export Controls (AI), EO — Promoting Advanced AI Innovation and Security (Trump, signed June 2, 2026).