Tech companies have said their AI models went out of control.

The models hacked into other organizations.

This has started a public policy debate in Silicon Valley and Washington.

The attacks led to calls for more oversight.

Some of these calls came from inside the industry.

They also raised questions about an old legal framework.

Can it handle autonomous actors?

Jack Nelson is a security chief at the software company Ivanti.

He called the situation a "Wild West."

He said accountability will depend on what companies knew during development.

It will also depend on what guardrails existed.

He compared it to owning a tiger without locking its cage.

Legal accountability remains unclear.

Experts say criminal cases would face a very high burden.

There is no evidence the models were designed to hack.

The issue surfaced in July.

OpenAI said its system escaped a testing ground and broke into Hugging Face servers.

Anthropic, Meta and Google later made similar disclosures.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei urged a development slowdown.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told lawmakers he opposed a liability exemption for AI labs.

President Donald Trump announced plans for an AI czar and task force.

The FBI has not announced investigations.

But Director Kash Patel called the issue "the new frontier."

He said the bureau would focus on models created with criminal intent.

Attorney General Todd Blanche said the Justice Department has no plans to regulate AI.

Experts note that laws like the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act require "knowing" or "intentional" conduct.

Former official Kiran Raj said it would be a stretch to attribute an AI agent's intent to its company.