US dominance of agentic AI at the heart of new NIST initiative

NIST announced the AI Agent Standards Initiative to develop standards and safeguards for agentic AI (autonomous AI systems that can perform tasks independently), with the goal of building public confidence and ensuring safe adoption. The initiative faces criticism for moving too slowly, as real-world security incidents involving agentic AI (like the EchoLeak vulnerability in Microsoft 365 Copilot and the OpenClaw agent that can let attackers access user data) are already occurring faster than standards can be developed.