February 23, 2026
WOPR meets paperwork
NIST Seeking Public Comment on AI Agent Security (Deadline: March 9, 2026)
Feds ask for help taming AI agents; commenters demand liability and drop WOPR jokes
TLDR: NIST is asking the public for tips to secure autonomous AI agents, with comments due March 9, 2026. The crowd is split between pushing for real-world liability, arguing politics and national security are skewing the focus, and cracking WarGames jokes—because these bots might control actual systems
The U.S. standards folks at NIST’s Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI) want the public to tell them how to keep autonomous AI “agents” from going off the rails—and the comments section immediately lit up. On one side, liability hawks demanded real consequences when bots misfire. “Make the companies pay,” cried one top reply, arguing that fancy rules mean nothing without a way to compensate people hurt by AI gone wrong. On another flank, policy skeptics stirred drama, painting the rename to CAISI as a political pivot and warning the focus might tilt toward national security optics over social harms. Meanwhile, the technical crowd dropped a reality check: agents don’t just need permission to act; they need clean, untampered info to act on—otherwise they’ll confidently do the wrong thing.
And yes, the memes are here: one commenter deadpanned “War Operations Plan Response,” a wink to the WarGames supercomputer, suggesting the feds are asking Reddit how to stop WOPR 2.0. Security pros flagged modern booby traps—like tricking bots with sneaky instructions or cascading errors—while one practical voice begged for concrete examples and tests. If you’ve got thoughts, the clock’s ticking: drop your hot takes at regulations.gov by March 9, 2026. The real action is in the comments
Key Points
- •NIST’s CAISI issued an RFI seeking input on practices and methodologies to measure and improve security of AI agent systems.
- •The RFI focuses on autonomous AI systems that take real-world actions and face risks such as hijacking and backdoor attacks.
- •Submissions should include concrete examples, best practices, case studies, and actionable recommendations from deployment experience.
- •Comments are due by March 9, 2026, must be submitted via regulations.gov (docket NIST-2025-0035), and will be posted publicly without redaction.
- •The RFI will inform CAISI’s work on risk evaluation, vulnerability assessment, measurement methods, and technical guidelines for AI security.