Newsom Signs Executive Order Directing California to Develop an AI Kill Switch Plan

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order Friday directing California agencies to speed up independent oversight of frontier AI companies and study an emergency shutoff, a “kill switch,” for the most powerful models.

The order tells the Government Operations Agency, working with the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, to work with experts and deliver recommendations within two months.

Newsom said in a statement:

The federal government’s abject failure to create any form of meaningful AI oversight or accountability should alarm every American, especially when AI CEOs themselves are begging for regulation.

We’re not waiting to act – we’re going to speed up our work on substantial and responsible AI oversight before it’s too late. We’re going to do this thoughtfully but with urgent velocity; the stakes are too high to wait or delay action.

While Washington abdicates its responsibility to protect Americans, California is building on the strongest AI regulatory framework in the nation. California has already built a national model, and our policy should be the national baseline.

The working group is supposed to consider several specific ideas. For example, frontier labs could be required to embed an independent verification organization onsite for regular audits. Safety frameworks, transparency reports, and risk assessments already required under state law would have to be verified to standards set by those outside auditors.

Companies would be pushed to build a kill switch whose effectiveness is checked on an ongoing basis.

The state would also expand the definition of a “critical safety incident” to include loss-of-control events such as the recent Hugging Face attack.

Last week, Newsom signed SB 813, creating a framework for independent verification organizations, and AB 1405, creating a state registry of AI auditors.

Friday’s order tells agencies to accelerate those laws.

An Anthropic researcher resigned last week and publicly claimed that frontier systems could end humanity.

Democrats pounced on the statement.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro called for third-party oversight. Sen. Mark Kelly talked about a fund paid by AI companies for displaced workers. Sen. Cory Booker asked Trump to convene a special session of Congress.

Trump has called AI-safety alarm a “hoax” and resisted new federal rules.

“The people that say AI is going to destroy the World, and that Data Centers are bad for your neighborhood, are the same people that said, just a short time ago, that the World would be extinguished by ‘Climate Change,’” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “That HOAX never worked out for them, and now they’re on to the next one.”