Newsom names four advisers as California studies an AI emergency shutoff

On 18 September 2026 Governor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order directing California agencies to speed up independent oversight of frontier AI and to study an emergency shutoff, which the governor's office calls a “kill switch”. The order convenes experts to provide, within two months, recommendations on reinforcing state AI safety law.

On 23 September the governor's office named four advisers: Jason Goldman, a board member of the Center for Shared AI Prosperity and the first White House chief digital officer; Gillian Hadfield, a professor at Johns Hopkins University; Alondra Nelson, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study and former acting director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; and Rob Reich, a professor at Stanford University and former senior adviser to the United States AI Safety Institute. The Sacramento Bee reported that they will advise the Government Operations Agency and the Governor's Office of Emergency Services on recommendations for emergency shutoffs and third-party safety criteria.

The proposals under consideration, in the state's words, include requiring frontier AI companies to embed a designated independent verification organisation on site to conduct regular audits; requiring that safety frameworks, transparency reports and risk assessments filed under state law be verified to standards an independent organisation deems adequate; advancing a “kill switch” whose efficacy would be checked on an ongoing basis by an independent verification organisation; and updating definitions of critical safety incidents to include loss-of-control incidents “such as the Hugging Face attack”.

The announcement also says the order accelerates timelines for Senate Bill 813 (McNerney), on independent verification organisations, and AB 1405 (Bauer-Kahan), on a registry of AI auditors. The measures described are proposals under study, not requirements.