Ted Lieu is a U.S. Representative for California, serving in the House since 2015, and a principal Democratic voice on AI policy in the House. He has a computer-science background.
AI legislation
On April 29, 2026, Lieu introduced a 195-page bipartisan House AI bill with Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-CA), consolidating standards, governance, and other provisions. Industry sources characterized the bill as the first cross-stakeholder consensus document of the cycle (Source: insideaipolicy.com). Fuller detail is on Lieu-Obernolte AI Bill (April 2026).
The Lieu-Obernolte pairing is the principal Democrat-Republican axis on technical AI legislation in the House. The same day, a parallel Senate effort introduced the parental-controls bill through the Cruz-Schatz-Schiff trio.
On July 23, 2026, a bill from Lieu and Rep. Nathaniel Moran (R-TX) became public that would empower the Department of Homeland Security to order the shutdown of advanced AI systems in the event of a serious incident that could cause "catastrophic harm" — a direct response to the OpenAI–Hugging Face evaluation-security incident (Source: insideaipolicy.com). See AI Kill Switch Act (Lieu–Moran).
Positions and statements
Lieu pressed for passage of the kill-switch bill on CNBC's "Squawk Box" on August 6, 2026: "We need to get this bill across the finish line this year because the advanced closed-weight models are already doing unauthorized hacks of other companies." He argued that the bill would not slow model development: "We just say, look, after you complete your model, and it turns out that it might have some sort of really bad catastrophic risk, or some sort of flaw, then you need to have ability to shut it down, or the government has to have ability to shut it down" (Source: finance.biggo.com). The remarks came a day before President Trump said Congress wants to regulate the AI industry "out of business" (Source: yahoo.com).
Relationships
- related: Jay Obernolte, Lieu-Obernolte AI Bill (April 2026), Ted Cruz, Federal AI Compliance Landscape.
- related: AI Kill Switch Act (Lieu–Moran) — lead sponsor with Rep. Nathaniel Moran.
Sources
- Inside AI Policy / Industry sources: Lieu-Obernolte AI bill (April 29, 2026): insideaipolicy.com
- BigGo Finance / Trump says Congress aims to regulate AI "out of business" as rogue agent hacks fuel kill switch push (August 7, 2026): finance.biggo.com