Cybersecurity & Tech States & Localities

Scaling Laws: Sen. Scott Wiener on California Senate Bill 53

Kevin Frazier, Alan Z. Rozenshtein, Scott Wiener
Tuesday, October 21, 2025, 11:53 AM
What is the significance of SB 53 in the large debate about how to govern AI?

Published by The Lawfare Institute
in Cooperation With
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California State Senator Scott Wiener, author of Senate Bill 53--a frontier AI safety bill--signed into law by Governor Newsom earlier this month, joins Alan Rozenshtein, Associate Professor at Minnesota Law and Research Director at Lawfare, and Kevin Frazier, AI Innovation and Law Fellow at the University of Texas School of Law and a Senior Editor at Lawfare, to explain the significance of SB 53 in the large debate about how to govern AI.

The trio analyze the lessons that Senator Wiener learned from the battle of SB 1047, a related bill that Newsom viewed last year, explore SB 53’s key provisions, and forecast what may be coming next in Sacramento and D.C.


Kevin Frazier is an AI Innovation and Law Fellow at UT Austin School of Law and Senior Editor at Lawfare .
Alan Z. Rozenshtein is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School, Research Director and Senior Editor at Lawfare, a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Previously, he served as an Attorney Advisor with the Office of Law and Policy in the National Security Division of the U.S. Department of Justice and a Special Assistant United States Attorney in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Maryland. He also speaks and consults on technology policy matters.
Scott Wiener is a California State Senator. He was elected in 2016 and represents the San Fransisco-Bay Area.
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