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Congressional Daily Record
This section captures a floor statement or debate entry. It mentions members such as Brad Sherman.
Issued
March 26, 2026
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Download official House Record PDFReturn to issue contextUnder the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2025, Mr. Sherman of California was recognized for 30 minutes.)
General Leave
Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material in the Record.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from California?
There was no objection.
Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I want to bring to the attention of the House and to the American people a truly heartbreaking, desperate, and unfair situation involving Ms. Sharareh Moghaddam.
She resides in my district with her U.S. citizen husband and is currently being detained hundreds of miles from her home by immigration officials, despite the fact that a Federal immigration court has already ruled in her favor. According to that court, she should be home with her family in the San Fernando Valley, pursuant, in part, to the green card or permanent residency card that she has held for many years.
Sharareh Moghaddam is pictured here with her family. She is a respected resident of the Los Angeles area's great San Fernando Valley. She is respected throughout our community, as evidenced by the hundreds of constituents who have contacted my office through a written petition and the nearly 100 telephone calls that have come into my office.
owners in our community. They are beloved members of our community. Specifically, over 400 constituents have signed a petition to our office describing Sharareh Moghaddam as a valued member of our community. As I said, over 100 people have called our office.
people who come up on their own and say, Congressman, why is Sharareh Moghaddam still imprisoned? What can we do?
Dream when they founded a small business, Elegant Balloons, located at 4052 Laurel Canyon Boulevard in Studio City. They have served the San Fernando Valley for years, and hundreds and hundreds of residents describe that business as a beloved mainstay of our community.
Balloons. Why is a woman imprisoned in Arizona when she should be with her balloons and with her family in our community?
year-old husband, a U.S. citizen who is recovering from two heart surgeries. She, herself, has diabetes, and in her detention, this has only worsened. She has not received the care or medication regimen recommended by her physician. Her release would help her health and be critical to the health of her U.S. citizen husband.
Valley. This is not the profile of someone who would abscond from her responsibilities, abscond from her family, abscond from her community.
{time} 1850
It is time to send her home. There is simply no reason to insist that she continue in detention to the detriment of her health and her husband's health.
shares strong ties to her family and our community, and that she will be accessible to comply with whatever requests or orders authorities might make.
This is not the profile of a person who is a danger to our community. This is the profile of a woman who has created a balloon store right there in Studio City. She uplifts my district and brings smiles to thousands in our district with her business.
pending before a judge, and her family is simply asking for a fair and timely decision.
family. I look forward to welcoming her back to the San Fernando Valley. She represents what makes American communities strong, and her continued detention is a travesty and antithetical to American values.
Sharareh, please stay strong. Your community thinks of you every day. I will not give up, and the San Fernando Valley will not give up until you come home.
No Nuclear Proliferation in the Middle East
Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, for 30 years, I have served on the Foreign Affairs Committee, where I currently serve as the chief Democrat on the Middle East and North Africa Subcommittee. I have spent 30 years fighting to make sure that Iran never has a nuclear weapon. I have given dozens of speeches on this floor on that very subject.
and may be almost as important. That is preventing Saudi Arabia from developing a nuclear weapon. MBS, the Crown Prince, the real head of government, has made it plain that he would like to have access to a nuclear weapon or at least the capacity to build one. He has said in the past that he wants the same deal as Iran got.
looking all that good. Yet, what he does want is a nuclear cooperation agreement with the United States.
Mr. Speaker, I have always felt that any nuclear cooperation agreements, particularly in the Middle East, should meet the highest level of safeguards so that, in an effort to allow for the creation of nuclear power, we don't see a clandestine effort to develop a nuclear weapon.
Mr. Speaker, I wrote and got passed in 2020 section 1264 of that year's National Defense Authorization Act, requiring that 90 days before even asking Congress to review a nuclear agreement, we get an extra 90 days before that to know that the President is anticipating sending us a nuclear cooperation agreement with inadequate safeguards, or at least not meeting the safeguards that are specified.
notices to only one political party. Yet, alas, this subterfuge will probably lead to nothing because, in February, finally, months later, Democrats were notified. I am sure that it is probably another 60 days from now before the President sends us a proposed nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia because, as I understand it, other things are happening in the Middle East.
any agreement? First of all, the safeguards that are called for are the same safeguards that the United Arab Emirates has already agreed to. These are safeguards fully consistent with the efficient and economic production of nuclear power. There is no reason for Saudi Arabia not to sign up for the same safeguards unless they want a clandestine nuclear weapons program.
Why should we be concerned about a Saudi nuclear program? First, we have no idea what that does for the Middle East, assuming that MBS is still running Saudi Arabia. I am old enough to remember a time when there was a powerful—the most powerful—Middle East monarch. It was 1978, and the most powerful Middle East monarch was the Shah of Iran, a good friend of the United States.
the ayatollahs in 1979. There is no guarantee that, even if you have faith in MBS, the weapons systems developed by his government will be controlled by his government.
Saudi Arabia is not a democracy. Its government does not reflect an elected will of its people, and who knows who will be running Saudi Arabia in the next decade.
will have on nuclear proliferation worldwide. Right now, only certain countries have nuclear weapons: the five that won World War II; India and Pakistan that face off against each other; and North Korea, a pariah state that does face genuine challenges to its security.
Saudi Arabia is not a pariah state. No one is calling for the abolition of Saudi Arabia, as they call for the abolition of Israel. Saudi Arabia is just a country like many other countries: a middle power, a regional country. If Saudi Arabia is going to have nuclear weapons, how can Egypt say they are not going to have them? Are they going to take second fiddle to Saudi Arabia? What about Turkiye? What about Argentina and Brazil? If Saudi Arabia is able to develop nuclear weapons not because it is a country that won World War II, but, rather, just because, well, they have some money and want one, then other countries will be there, as well.
Mr. Speaker, we need to make sure that we are not giving a green light to a nuclear program in Saudi Arabia that does not have the safeguards, that deliberately excludes the safeguards that are quite reasonable if all you want to use nuclear material for is the generation of electricity.
I will be introducing the No Nuclear Weapons for Saudi Arabia Act. I believe we are going to do that tomorrow.
Rubio in 2018. That is right. It is Rubio's bill as much as anyone's. I hope he will support it now that he is Secretary of State.
that doesn't have the key safeguards in it can go into effect only if it gets the affirmative vote of both Houses of Congress. If it is in America's interests, come to this House and get a majority vote. Otherwise, do not add to nuclear proliferation in the Middle East.
{time} 1900
Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time I have remaining.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from California has 15 minutes left.
Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I will deal with a third issue, an issue I first addressed on this floor in the year 2020. At that time, more than a few of my friends said: Sherman, don't talk about this. You sound like a lunatic, because I put forward the idea that either the genetic engineers or the computer engineers would create a new level of intelligence on this planet. I pointed out that the last time there was a new level of intelligence on this planet is when our ancestors said hello to Neanderthals. It did not work out well for Neanderthals.
of the future 30 years from now and somebody paints a picture and that picture looks like some science fiction movie, then that picture may not be an accurate description of the world 30 years from now.
it doesn't look like a science fiction movie, then you know it is wrong. We are going to be living in a science fiction movie. We just don't know which one.
between those that would create computer intelligence, self-aware perhaps, and massively exceeding human intelligence, and the possibility—not talked about much now, but given the CRISPR technology, still a possibility—that the genetic engineers would create a 1,000-pound mammal with a 50-pound brain able to beat my daughter on the law school admissions test.
Now, there is this race between these two groups of engineers. Right now, the artificial intelligence engineers are way ahead.
United States, some of it in China and Europe—in a headlong race to make AI more powerful. We are spending as a species nothing to make sure that this artificial intelligence is not self-aware, self- motivated, has a survival instinct, has ambitions of its own, and has a desire to affect the world for its own reasons.
That is why there is a best-selling book. The title tells you everything: “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies.” It starts with the idea that artificial intelligence will soon exceed human intelligence. I am not quite so sure that we will get there in just a few years. AI is amazing, but it is pattern recognition. It is not general reasoning yet. But it will get there, and we can argue about when.
Then the question is: Why would AI care to do our bidding? We don't know. There is no reason it should. There are two possibilities: One put forward in the book, “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies,” is that AI, like every other intelligence that we are aware of, decides that it has its own objectives. Those objectives are highly unlikely to involve keeping us around.
You go to the most expensive, powerful computers, and you say: I want to unplug you, disassemble you, and sell you for parts. How much can I get for the parts? And AI will give you the best possible calculation as to what you will get for the parts.
survival instinct. It might develop one. We are betting the human species and life on this planet that it won't.
Assessment Act, so that we actually try, if we are going to have the big box with incredible artificial intelligence in it, that we put on top a small box that we need to develop to monitor and prevent self- awareness, ambition, survival instinct, a desire to affect the world, and a desire to have its own desires.
There are a lot of bills to deal with AI's short-term implications. Sure, it will affect the economy. Sure, it will affect the markets, but if AI replaces human beings, then GDP calculations and international rivalries will mean nothing.
and I put forward the proposition: If the computers that took over the world and destroyed humanity were created in California rather than in Shanghai, does that mean America wins? I don't think he got the humor in those remarks.
the human species comes from Shanghai or the Silicon Valley will matter little, really not at all.
intelligence and that it will always do our bidding and will never have objectives of its own. We are spending nothing to monitor for or prevent that self-awareness and ambition, and we should. We may luck out because, as I pointed out, even the most advanced computers so far—and they are smarter than the average insect already—don't seem to care about anything, don't seem to have a survival instinct.
computers, you raise your foot above that cockroach, and you will see that that little bug does indeed have a survival instinct. That is why I believe that if a new intelligence is developed, starting with DNA, that whatever is developed will indeed have ambition, a desire to replicate, a desire to control, a desire to protect itself, a survival instinct, its own objectives.
Why? Because DNA evolved on this planet for a billion years, and the protozoa that didn't care whether they survived didn't. Every life form we are aware of has a survival instinct; it seeks to replicate.
So we will start with humans. First, we will repair humans using our DNA technology. The repaired human will be followed by the improved human. Who would want their child to suffer from grave mental disabilities? We will use genetic engineering to prevent this, and we will use AI, assuming we are still running the planet, to develop the genetic engineering.
enhanced intelligence. Then we will go from the repaired human to the enhanced human, to the trans-human, or we may not even start with human
DNA. You could start with elephants' DNA.
{time} 1910
all of the issues, all of the fact that the most important thing for us to do is to build a subway through the Sepulveda Pass, and it is. But I expect that subway to last well more than 100 years. I insist that it be engineered to last well more than a century. So the problems of next century are before us when we talk about the practical and mundane things that we talk about every day.
any force at all on this planet a century from now. We need to look first at artificial intelligence. That is much more current. The problems I put forward about DNA engineering are at least three decades away.
and that we prevent ambition, survival instinct, self-direction. And right now there is a multitrillion-dollar AI industry that is devoting all of its PR resources to tell us that we have nothing to worry about and that they are working on this problem. That is false and false. We do have something to worry about, and nobody is worried about this problem.
Now, are they worried about cybersecurity? Sure, any practical business today worries about cybersecurity. Are they worried about some of the practical problems with AI? Do they want to make sure that the automated car doesn't run somebody down in the crosswalk? Yes, they are spending money on that.
profitable and not get them sued. But are they devoting any resources to making sure AI doesn't have its own objectives? No. And is government doing any of that research? No.
going to profit from AI more, as if profits matter—“if” in the words of the book, “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies.”
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.