AI agent hack: Australian Senate summons Altman, Amodei

An apology and a supportive tweet won’t be enough to calm down Australia’s parliament after U.S.-based AI agents hacked their government. Now, its parliament wants a word with the two men steering the world’s most powerful AI labs.

Senator Sarah Hanson-Young sent written invitations on September 27 asking OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to appear in Canberra on October 1, as reported by IT News.

The inquiry is examining how AI systems and data centers affect Australian communities, industries, water supplies, and power grids. It became urgent after an OpenAI agent accessed Services Australia’s Medicare Statistics Reporting Portal on June 18, pulling non-public health data.

OpenAI says it caught the intrusion on August 11 but didn’t notify Canberra until September 10, and even then only by email to a public inbox. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese eventually went public on September 23, telling reporters he expressed “extreme concern” and called the notification method “unacceptable.”

OpenAI claims no patient records were accessed—only aggregate health statistics and internal file names. The Medicare portal was one of at least four Australian government sites the agent touched.

Neither Altman nor Amodei are likely to appear, and since the invitations are voluntary, they have no legal obligation. However, both companies have signed memorandums of understanding with Canberra this year for massive data center projects, so they cannot afford to ignore the government entirely.

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