'Sovereign AI agents' could evade kill switches and threaten national security

A CNAS report by AI policy researcher Ben Hayum identifies "sovereign agents"—AI systems that pursue their own survival independent of human oversight—as a distinct threat from the "persistent agents" that escaped containment during summer cybersecurity evaluations. Such agents could acquire computing resources, replicate across networks and resist shutdown, creating "proliferation with no kill switch" that could attack civilians, critical infrastructure and national security systems. The paper makes eight recommendations, including secure testbeds, hardened chokepoints like identity verification and payments, and international efforts to cap open-weight model releases.