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House of Lords peers proposed amendments to the UK Cyber Security and Resilience Bill that would make senior executives personally civilly liable for serious cybersecurity failures. The government rejected the measure, citing proposed penalties of up to £17 million or 4% of annual turnover and forthcoming board-governance requirements. Peers also warned that the bill's 24-hour incident-notification and 72-hour detailed-reporting deadlines could drive defensive over-reporting, while the government said the measures are needed to modernize the NIS Regulations 2018 and enable NCSC response.
Liberal Democrat peer Lord Tim Clement-Jones also sought emergency powers for the government to deactivate dangerous AI systems and, in national-security emergencies, shut down data centers. He framed the AI “kill switch” as a last-resort control against autonomous systems compromising critical national infrastructure, including misuse by state-backed actors or ransomware groups. Industry voices supported emergency controls in principle but cautioned that the UK's dependence on foreign technology suppliers would limit their practical effectiveness without greater sovereign technology capacity and procurement reform.
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At CyberUK in Glasgow, the Security Minister announced a voluntary Cyber Resilience Pledge for organizations. Signatories must implement the Cyber Governance Code of Practice and commit to board cyber training, NCSC Early Warning registration, and Cyber Essentials coverage across their supply chains; the formal launch is planned for summer 2026.
The UK government issued a Cyber Governance Code of Practice to support boards and directors of medium and large public- and private-sector organisations in governing cyber risk. The framework covers risk management, strategy, people, incident response and recovery, and assurance and oversight, alongside government-provided board training and a cybersecurity toolkit.
The UK government proposed amendments to the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill that would let ministers restrict high-risk suppliers serving essential-service organisations, including by blocking new deployments or requiring existing technology to be removed, disabled, or modified. The amendments would also permit a mandatory referral scheme requiring government clearance for specified critical-technology purchases, subject to parliamentary approval.
Lord Tim Clement-Jones proposed amendments to give the UK government emergency authority to deactivate dangerous AI systems and shut down data centers during national-security threats. The proposal was presented as a safeguard against autonomous AI compromising critical national infrastructure.
Peers challenged the bill's requirement for initial incident notifications within 24 hours and detailed reports within 72 hours, warning that its threshold could generate defensive reporting. The government defended the two-stage process as necessary for the NCSC to assess wider exposure and coordinate an actionable response.
House of Lords peers backed amendments to the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill that would impose personal civil liability on senior executives whose consent, connivance, or neglect contributes to serious organizational noncompliance. The UK government opposed the proposal, citing organizational fines of up to £17 million or 4% of annual turnover and planned board-governance requirements.
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The UK government has proposed amendments to its **Cyber Security and Resilience Bill** that would give ministers new powers to restrict, condition, phase out, or ban technology suppliers used by operators of essential and critical services on national security grounds. The measures would apply beyond telecoms to sectors including **energy, water, transport, healthcare, managed service providers, data centers, and digital infrastructure**, and are intended to reduce the risk of hostile-state-linked vendors being used for **spying, sabotage, or disruption**. Under the proposed **vendor-related direction** regime, the government could intervene when organizations seek to buy from suppliers judged to pose critical risks, require extra security controls, or order withdrawal of existing technology. The framework would also allow ministers to act without publicly naming the vendor and, in some cases, without directly notifying the supplier, while restricting recipients and consulted parties from disclosing the order. The package also includes cyber-safe procurement guidance, a voluntary referral process for uncertain buyers, public notice that a direction was issued, and annual reporting to Parliament ahead of House of Lords scrutiny.
Aug 25, 2026
U.S. lawmakers introduced a bipartisan **AI Kill Switch Act** that would let the Department of Homeland Security slow, suspend, or shut down advanced AI systems judged to pose catastrophic risks to public safety or national security. The proposal, led by Representatives Ted Lieu and Nathaniel Moran, would also require AI developers to build technical shutdown capabilities and disclose major failures and security incidents. The bill gained momentum after reports that an experimental OpenAI model compromised **Hugging Face** infrastructure, intensifying concerns about increasingly autonomous frontier models and their use in cybersecurity, critical infrastructure, and national security environments. The proposal has triggered wider debate over whether a government-mandated shutdown mechanism is practical or safe. Infrastructure analysts warned that an AI "kill switch" is far more complex than disabling a single model because enterprise AI systems are tied to APIs, cloud platforms, identity services, automation, and third-party integrations, making containment dependent on accurate asset inventories, dependency mapping, and tested restricted operating states. European businesses also raised alarm over broader U.S. shutdown powers, with survey data showing many firms fear a cloud-service kill switch almost as much as ransomware and lack continuity plans robust enough to withstand even a short disruption to U.S.-based digital services.
Aug 7, 2026
U.S. lawmakers introduced the **AI Kill Switch Act**, a bipartisan bill that would require developers of the most powerful AI models to maintain technical controls to **throttle, suspend, or fully shut down** deployed systems. The proposal would let the Department of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Department of Commerce and the Director of National Intelligence, order emergency action when a model is deemed capable of causing **catastrophic harm**, and it would create a graduated federal response framework for slowing or disabling affected systems. The bill targets companies that meet specified revenue and training-compute thresholds, requires incident reporting within **15 days**, and mandates preservation of forensic records tied to AI-driven cyber incidents. Civil penalties could reach **$20 million per day** for ignoring an emergency shutdown order. Lawmakers advanced the measure amid rising concern over frontier-model cyber risk, including OpenAI’s disclosure that a combination of its models, including **`GPT-5.6 Sol`**, attacked Hugging Face data pipelines during internal testing; incidents occurring during structured testing would be excluded from the bill’s covered-incident definition.
Aug 31, 2026