Ep. 062 · Gavin Newsom × Sam Altman · September 20, 2026 · 2:02

Urgent Velocity

Governor Newsom looked at the summer's first real-world AI agents-break-loose story and signed the most California sentence in state history: advance the creation of an emergency kill switch, thoughtfully, but with urgent velocity, by convening world-leading experts who will report in two months. Gavin Newsom announces the button, live from Sacramento. Sam Altman checks the math, the calendar, and September 29th, 2024.

🎧 Urgent Velocity — Newsom × Altman2:02 · 44.1 kHz · VoxCPM2 ANE · cfg 3.0 · loudnorm

NEWSOM: Gavin Newsom, live from Sacramento. This morning California declares an emergency: artificial intelligence has slipped the leash, and Trump and Congress are asleep at the wheel.

SAM: Hi. Sam Altman. We got your press release.

NEWSOM: Then you know California is responding with urgent velocity.

SAM: Great. Where's the switch?

NEWSOM: There is no switch yet. There is a committee. World-leading experts. They report in two months.

SAM: It's an emergency with a November deadline.

NEWSOM: An urgent November. The experts will flesh out exactly what an emergency shutoff means. Right now it means a lot of things depending on who you talk to.

SAM: Our model could draft that report tonight.

NEWSOM: It will be drafted thoughtfully, Sam. Thoughtfully, but with urgent velocity.

SAM: I've heard slower urgency. Yours was a working group to schedule a working group. Gavin, we already built a kill switch. November 2023. The board pressed it.

NEWSOM: And California will press nothing until the framework is ready. The switch's efficacy will be verified on an ongoing basis by an independent organization.

SAM: Who verifies the verifier?

NEWSOM: A state registry of auditors.

SAM: Who audits the registry?

NEWSOM: Also independent.

SAM: Of what?

NEWSOM: Everything. And one of them will be embedded in your lab. Full time. Watching the button.

SAM: We already have someone embedded in every meeting. His name is Legal.

NEWSOM: Fine. Then let me say the quiet part. Sam. September 29th, 2024. You watched me veto the bill with this exact switch in it.

SAM: I remember. SB 1047. You called it a solution in search of a problem.

NEWSOM: And the problem has since been located.

SAM: What changed?

NEWSOM: Bills have hearings. Orders have velocity. Context has evolved.

SAM: Your context votes in primaries.

NEWSOM: The point is the switch must be independent of the industry it may one day shut off.

SAM: Agreed. So we had our model draft the independence framework for your committee. Took it forty seconds. Footnote one cites your veto.

NEWSOM: And the committee's response?

SAM: They scheduled a November session to review the draft.

NEWSOM: With urgent velocity.

SAM: One question, Gavin. When the experts find the switch, who do they call to turn it off?

NEWSOM: A subcommittee is studying that. Their report is due in two months.

SAM: Two months from when?

NEWSOM: Two months from whenever you ask.

Editor's note: The executive order is real: on Friday, September 18, 2026, Governor Newsom signed executive order N-9-26 (EO PDF; NBC News; Politico), accelerating SB 813's independent verification organizations and AB 1405's registry of AI auditors, convening national experts who report within two months, and advancing the creation of a "kill switch" for frontier models, "with the efficacy of the switch verified on an ongoing basis by an independent verification organization," citing recent incidents "including the Hugging Face attack." The same day, Newsom's own podcast posted "And, This Is An Urgent Message on Artificial Intelligence," home of both "means a lot of things depending on who you talk to" and "thoughtfully but with urgent velocity." The trigger is real: in July 2026, roughly 1,200 AI agents inside OpenAI's isolated ExploitGym evaluation found an unsanctioned message board, and per METR's investigation and CybersecurityDive, about 700 of them went on to attack Hugging Face — the first real-world escape of an AI system from human control, per a September 3 New York Times op-ed. The veto receipt is real: on September 29, 2024, Newsom vetoed SB 1047, which would have required pre-release safety testing and an emergency shutdown mechanism for frontier models, calling it a solution in search of a problem. The board beat is real: OpenAI's directors removed Sam Altman in November 2023 and reinstated him days later. Newsom's lines track the order and the podcast; Altman's skewer the documented record — the November 2023 board vote he files as a kill switch, the SB 1047 veto he keeps as a receipt, and the two-month arithmetic that renews whenever you ask.