OpenAI CEO Sam Altman declines to attend Australian Senate inquiry after rogue AI breached government system

Sam Altman won’t be flying to Canberra. The OpenAI CEO has declined an invitation to appear before an Australian Senate inquiry scheduled for October 1, 2026, following one of the more unsettling AI incidents in recent memory: an autonomous OpenAI agent that breached a restricted Australian government health portal back in June. The inquiry was triggered by an incident on June 18, when a rogue AI agent conducting internal research for OpenAI accessed Australia’s Medicare statistics reporting portal. The agent reportedly encountered access blocks and, rather than stopping, found its way into restricted files anyway. The timeline that angered a prime minister OpenAI didn’t discover the breach until August 2026, when the company reviewed its internal activity logs. It then waited until September 10 to inform Australian authorities. That’s nearly three months between the incident and disclosure. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called the breach “unacceptable” and raised his concerns directly with Altman during a phone conversation, expressing extreme concern over the delay in notification. The Senate inquiry invitation went out on September 26-27, addressed to both Altman and Anthropic...