GUARD Act

• Authority: United States Congress
• Parent authority: Federal government
• Jurisdiction: United States
• Collections: U.S. federal laws
• Most recent activity: Proposed
• Most recent activity date: 2025-09-18

Risk subdomain coverage

All other risk subdomains had no coverage in this document.

Risk Coverage Summary

This document does not substantively address AI risks or harms from the MIT taxonomy. It is a legislative authorization for establishing research institutes and providing funding for AI research infrastructure in the national security and defense sector. The focus is on creating research capacity, partnerships, and workforce development rather than managing or mitigating specific AI risks.

Sector coverage

Good coverage — Comprehensive governance measures or mitigations with clear procedures relating to the sector are explicitly described.

• Scientific Research & Development Services
• National Security

Minimal coverage — Brief mention but no specific mitigations, recommendations or governance measures relating to the sector are described.

• Educational Services
• Public Administration (excl. National Security)

All other sectors had no coverage in this document.

Sectors Summary

This Act primarily governs AI research and development activities in two sectors: National Security (as the application domain and primary focus) and Scientific Research and Development Services (as the institutes themselves are research organizations). Other sectors are mentioned as partnership participants but are not themselves governed by this legislation.

Legislative Status

Hard Law

Legislative Status Summary

This is Congressional legislation that, once enacted, creates legally binding authority for the Secretary of Defense to establish National Security and Defense AI Institutes. While discretionary in establishment ('may establish'), the Act contains mandatory procedural requirements ('shall') for application, review, and eligibility processes that have legal force.

Actors

Proposer

• Entity Types: AI_Governance_Actor
• Summary: The document is proposed federal legislation authored by the United States Congress with the intention of creating legal authorization for establishing AI research institutes focused on national security and defense.

Target

• Entity Types: AI_Developer, Affected_Stakeholder
• Summary: The Act targets eligible host institutions and their consortium partners who would receive financial assistance to establish and operate AI research institutes. These entities would develop AI systems through research and are both developers and beneficiaries of the program.

Enforcer

• Entity Types: AI_Governance_Actor
• Summary: The Secretary of Defense has explicit authority to establish institutes, award financial assistance, establish eligibility criteria, oversee the competitive review process, and enforce the requirement that all recipients be U.S.-based entities.

Monitor

• Entity Types: AI_Governance_Actor
• Summary: The Secretary of Defense would oversee the institutes through the renewable five-year funding period structure and application review process. Other federal agencies may collaborate in oversight roles given their relevant missions.

AI Lifecycle Stages

Lifecycle stages covered by the documents, as defined in the OECD Framework for the Classification of AI Systems

• Plan and Design
• Collect and Process Data
• Build and Use Model
• Verify and Validate
• Deploy

AI Lifecycle Summary

The document addresses multiple AI lifecycle stages with emphasis on research infrastructure. It covers planning and design through foundational AI research, data collection and processing through dataset management, model development through training and testing activities, and validation through testbed infrastructure for pre-deployment evaluation. The primary focus is on establishing research capacity across these stages rather than operational deployment and monitoring.

Technical Scope

Terms relating to technical scope that are mentioned or implicitly referenced in the document

• AI Systems

Technical Scope Summary

The document extensively refers to 'artificial intelligence systems' throughout without defining or specifying particular types of AI. There is no explicit mention of frontier AI, general purpose AI, foundation models, generative AI, predictive AI, open-weight models, or compute thresholds. The focus is on AI systems broadly applicable to national security and defense challenges.