PANews reported on May 5th that, according to Jinshi, senior security officials in more than a dozen US states have urged artificial intelligence companies to include these states in their early access model testing, arguing that developers are currently prioritizing partnerships with Washington and large tech companies. In a letter dated Tuesday to the CEOs of OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, and Google, a group of state chief information security officers, homeland security advisors, and technology officials stated that states are still being excluded from early access programs. The letter reads: “While we appreciate the rollout of the new cyber defense program, we are deeply concerned about the current practice of prioritizing partnerships with federal partners and large tech companies, while essentially excluding state and local agencies responsible for providing and protecting many of the nation’s critical services.”