NSA Spending Billions on Classified AI Model Tests — SkimNews
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- NSA is spending billions of taxpayer dollars this year testing frontier AI models through its AI Security Center — a figure far higher than previously known — and lawmakers now estimate a full regulatory system could cost tens of billions per year.
- The NSA began evaluating frontier models after a string of high-profile hacking and security incidents to identify potential national security vulnerabilities in systems built by the most powerful AI companies.
- President Trump has mostly resisted federal AI oversight, rejecting regulatory proposals from both members of Congress and the frontier labs aimed at imposing new safeguards.
- Prior public cost estimates were far lower: the CBO priced the bipartisan AI Security and Innovation Act at roughly $20 million per year, while a separate House AI reporting bill calls for $36 million total over five years.
- The biggest line items for the NSA are computing power for running models and personnel — some top AI engineers command salaries in the hundreds of millions, a pay scale the government cannot match.
- Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic are jointly working on their own AI safety 'standards body,' which some safety experts call self-policing; both Anthropic and OpenAI have said they may be open to paying for independent federal oversight.
- Experts including Encode's Nathan Calvin and the AI Verification and Evaluation Research Institute's Nat Purser argue an assessment fee on frontier developers should fund independent audits rather than leaving taxpayers with the bill.
Why it matters: The NSA's classified bill reframes the AI regulation debate from whether to regulate to who pays — with frontier labs offering nine-figure AI engineer salaries and chip costs surging, lawmakers may push to levy fees on AI developers rather than rely on taxpayer funding. The gap between the CBO's $20 million/year estimate and the NSA's 'billions' suggests real-world safety evaluation is orders of magnitude more expensive than Congress budgeted.
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