Our approach to government and national security partnerships
Key Points
- Published National Security Principles
- Trusted Access for cyber and biosecurity
- Bans on surveillance, autonomous weapons, high-stakes automation
Summary
OpenAI published its National Security Principles (2026-07-08) to clarify how it will partner with governments and law enforcement on defensive national security work. The principles prioritize defensive missions (cyber defense, biosecurity), democratic accountability, meaningful human judgment, and transparency. They reflect a cross-company process with independent expert review (David Kris) and detail operational approaches such as Trusted Access programs (Daybreak for cyber; GPT‑Rosalind for biodefense) and ongoing partnerships with allied governments and EU institutions.
Key Points
- Purpose: enable public-sector defensive uses (protect people, infrastructure, public health) while avoiding power concentration.
- Access controls: Trusted Access model for select allied partners and controlled model distributions (e.g., GPT‑Rosalind).
- Explicit prohibitions: no mass domestic surveillance, no use to direct autonomous weapons systems, no high‑stakes automated decisions.
- Governance: independent expert input, cross-company consultation, and public transparency about restrictions and contracts.
- Engineering implications: enforce fine-grained access control, logging/audit trails, human-in-the-loop safeguards, and formal testing/evaluation with government partners.
- Policy stance: supports legislative safeguards for highest-risk military and surveillance-related AI uses.