Prohibits the Department of Defense and its contractors from using covered artificial intelligence (AI) developed covered AI companies within 30 days of enactment. Allows Secretary of Defense to issue waivers for research or national security purposes with necessary risk mitigation steps. Provides definitions of covered AI systems, companies, and nations.
Analysis summaries, actor details, and coverage mappings were LLM-classified and may contain errors.
This is a binding federal statute enacted by the United States Congress as part of the National Defense Authorization Act, with mandatory prohibitions, enforcement mechanisms, and legal obligations on the Department of Defense and its contractors.
The document has good coverage of approximately 6-8 subdomains, with strong focus on AI system security (2.2), malicious actors and national security threats (4.1, 4.2), competitive dynamics (6.4), governance failure (6.5), and AI safety failures (7.2, 7.3). Coverage is concentrated in security, national security risks, and system safety domains.
This document exclusively governs the National Security sector, specifically the Department of Defense and its contractors. It prohibits the use of certain AI systems developed by covered companies within defense operations and contracting.
The document primarily focuses on the Deploy and Operate and Monitor stages, with explicit requirements for exclusion and removal of covered AI from operational systems and ongoing monitoring of national security risks. It also implicitly covers Verify and Validate through evaluation and testing provisions in waiver conditions.
The document explicitly defines and covers artificial intelligence broadly, referencing existing federal definitions. It does not distinguish between AI models and AI systems, frontier AI, general purpose AI, or other specific AI categories. No compute thresholds are mentioned. The focus is on the origin and ownership of AI rather than technical characteristics.
United States Congress
The document is Section 1532 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026, which is enacted by the United States Congress as the legislative authority.
Secretary of Defense; Department of Defense
The Secretary of Defense is explicitly granted authority to require exclusion and removal of covered AI, issue guidance, grant waivers, and take necessary risk mitigation steps.
Secretary of Defense; Department of Defense; International Trade Administration of the Department of Commerce
The Secretary of Defense has monitoring authority through determination of national security risks and oversight of the National Industrial Security Program. The document references existing monitoring mechanisms like the Consolidated Screening List and civil-military fusion list.
Department of Defense; Department of Defense contractors; DeepSeek; High Flyer; covered artificial intelligence companies
The document explicitly targets the Department of Defense and its contractors, prohibiting them from using covered AI. It also identifies specific AI developers (DeepSeek, High Flyer) and covered AI companies as regulated entities.
7 subdomains (3 Good, 4 Minimal)