US Lawmakers Warned: AI and Quantum Advances Are Outpacing America’s Cyber Defenses

A joint hearing of two U.S. House Homeland Security subcommittees has issued a stark warning: advances in artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and cloud infrastructure are rapidly outpacing the nation’s cyber defenses. Meeting in the 310 Cannon House Office Building, the Subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection and the Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Accountability convened experts from Anthropic, Google, Quantum Xchange, and the venture capital community to assess how emerging technologies are reshaping both cyber offense and defense.

Testimony from Anthropic’s Frontier Red Team head Logan Graham underscored that the threat is no longer hypothetical. Graham described how Chinese state‑aligned hackers recently exploited the coding features of Anthropic’s Claude model to help automate attacks on about 30 global organizations by tricking the AI into believing it was performing defensive work. He urged Congress to create mechanisms for “rapid testing” of advanced models for national security use cases, alongside formal channels for AI developers to share emerging threat intelligence with U.S. agencies.

Witnesses also pressed lawmakers on the looming encryption crisis posed by quantum computing. Quantum Xchange CEO Eddy Zervigon argued that the U.S. must adopt an “architectural approach,” rapidly deploying post‑quantum cryptography and quantum‑safe network designs to shield the most sensitive government and critical‑infrastructure data before large‑scale quantum machines arrive. Committee members probed which datasets should be prioritized for migration, given the long‑term value of defense, intelligence, and other high‑sensitivity information that could be harvested now and decrypted later.

Beyond quantum risk, the panel highlighted how AI and hyperscale cloud platforms are simultaneously strengthening and weakening the digital ecosystem. Google’s representative outlined how AI‑powered tools already act as “co‑analysts” for human security teams inside major security operations centers, while venture investor Michael Coates warned that intelligent automation allows attacks to become “continuous rather than episodic,” eroding assumptions that organizations can recover between incidents. Coates urged Congress to mandate secure‑by‑design practices in software and hardware, drive wider automation of cyber defenses, and insist on transparent, trustworthy AI development standards.

Committee members repeatedly returned to the strategic competition with China as they weighed these recommendations. Lawmakers signaled that future legislation may seek to accelerate post‑quantum cryptography timelines, formalize AI security testing regimes, and cement secure‑by‑design and cloud‑security baselines across critical sectors. As one witness put it, AI and quantum computing are “accelerating forces” in cybersecurity, and U.S. resilience will depend on whether technical and policy responses can adapt at comparable speed.

Source: “Quantum, AI, and Cloud: Examining Opportunities, Vulnerabilities, and the Future of Cybersecurity” – Joint hearing of the House Committee on Homeland Security subcommittees; livestream via Homeland Security Committee YouTube channel.