State governments are moving at breakneck speed crafting policy on artificial intelligence. In just two years, lawmakers have passed dozens of bills targeting deepfakes in campaigns, shielding citizens from abusive synthetic media, creating rules for high-risk applications. In 2025 alone, over 1,000 AI-related bills were introduced across the states.
For most Americans, it is assumed that the freedom to access and use computing power, the very foundation of modern innovation, is secure. Yet in practice, that freedom is under threat. From California to New York, legislatures and governors are chipping away at this liberty, treating computation itself as something the public must be shielded from rather than empowered by. This is not a small matter: it strikes at a core pillar of the American experiment—our ability to think, invent, and build with the tools of the age.
Montana charted a different course. In spring 2025, it became the first jurisdiction in the world to enact a right to compute: a statutory guarantee that individuals and organizations can own and use computational resources unless the government can demonstrate that restrictions are narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling interest. This simple but profound step filled a glaring gap in state, and even global, AI lawmaking.
Montana’s Right to Compute Act, signed in April 2025 after strong bipartisan votes, creates a clear default of freedom for its citizens: government actions that would restrict lawful use or ownership of “computational resources”—hardware, software, algorithms, cryptography, machine learning, networks, even quantum applications—must be narrowly tailored and demonstrably necessary to serve a compelling government interest. That language is not rhetoric; it’s the operative standard, and the statute provides practical definitions that will help agencies, courts, and businesses apply it.
Montana pairs this rights‑affirming law with targeted safety measures for critical infrastructure. If an AI system helps operate a critical facility, the deployer must maintain a reasonable risk‑management policy that references widely recognized standards—explicitly including the NIST AI Risk Management Framework (AI RMF) or comparable international frameworks. This is governance that adapts as best practices evolve, instead of freezing technology in statute.
Why Government Should Protect Computational Liberty
This raises the question: why is explicit legal protection for computational rights necessary now? Americans have, after all, been using computers for decades without a specific “right to compute” enshrined in law. The answer lies in the changing global and domestic regulatory landscape. A computer, like the abacus and slide rule before it, is simply a technological amplification of human cognition. In the 21st century, access to computational resources increasingly determines who can participate fully in economic, civic, and intellectual life. Computers enable economic growth and an improved quality of life that benefits all Americans. Most of all, the computer represents opportunity.
As computers become more intertwined in daily life, computational resources and access are increasingly subject to government restrictions. This is often based on how much processing power they use, what tasks they perform, or who is using them. Montana’s approach is rooted in a deeper philosophical principle: computational freedom is not a privilege to be granted by the government but a natural extension of rights we already possess that should be protected by the government.
This isn’t merely abstract philosophy. We’ve already seen how governments can abuse control over computational resources. In the UK the government is requiring identification before citizens can access the internet and is now implementing a digital ID system. China’s government imposes even stricter requirements on its citizens’ ability to access the internet. Similar ideas have been proposed in the US that would require verification before citizens can access app stores or even purchase a smartphone. President Biden’s Executive Order 14110 imposed regulations on AI development based on arbitrary computational thresholds, modeled on the European Union’s AI Act. Fortunately, President Trump nullified that executive order. All these approaches, and similar ones that could easily be proposed in the future, give regulatory agencies sweeping discretion to determine who may access computational power and under what conditions. A right to compute law provides a firewall against this kind of creeping technocratic control.
Why other states should adopt a Right to Compute
First, it keeps the focus on bad conduct, not tools. State laws already prohibit almost all harmful uses of AI without outlawing general‑purpose computing. A right to compute complements current law by clarifying that open‑ended innovation remains presumptively lawful, while fraud, deception, and harassment remain illegal. It is a freedom-preserving measure for all citizens of the state, providing individuals with a defensive mechanism against government overreach.
Second, it opens the door for builders. Entrepreneurs, universities, and small firms need assurance that new code, chips, and models won’t be preemptively banned just because they’re new or particularly powerful. A clear statutory presumption in favor of lawful compute lowers the “unknown unknowns” that can chase investment away from emerging tech hubs and university research corridors.
Third, it strengthens economic competitiveness. AI has unleashed a race to expand computing capacity and the infrastructure behind it—power, fiber, data centers, cooling, and skilled labor. States sending a stable, pro‑innovation signal will compete better for the projects, jobs, and grid upgrades that come with this build‑out.
Who’s moving next?
Montana won’t be alone for long. Ohio legislators introduced the Ohio Right to Compute Actthis summer, signaling widespread interest in transplanting the same framework—affirm the right, define the terms, and pair it with risk management for AI in critical infrastructure. New Hampshire is considering right to compute constitutional amendment. The American Legislative Exchange Council adopted and released a right compute model bill that closely tracks Montana’s structure, giving states a starting point to adapt to local law.
Despite all the benefits, there are some common critiques of this bold approach.
“Isn’t a right to compute a hands‑off approach to AI?” No. It merely forbids broad, preemptive bans on tools while preserving enforcement against deception, fraud, harassment, IP infringement, and safety risks. Montana’s law even enumerates compelling interests to make that point unmistakable. And where AI touches critical infrastructure, it requires documented risk management tied to national standards. It shifts the burden onto the government to demonstrate that regulation is required.
“Won’t this tie regulators’ hands as AI evolves?” No. It merely puts an additional barrier between government regulation and an individual’s right to use their property. As the Montana bill and model bills stipulate, there needs to be compelling government interest, so regulation is still possible if the reason fits that qualification. The core rule—punish harmful conduct, not generalized capability—ages better than technical mandates that hard‑code today’s assumptions. Americans currently have broad access rights to computers, and that has not prevented law enforcement from prosecuting bad actors who use computers to break the law.
“Isn’t it premature to enshrine legal protections for technology we don’t yet fully understand?” This objection gets the question backwards. The right to compute doesn’t create a new right; it affirms an existing one. Just as the First Amendment protected speech before anyone imagined the internet, and the Fourth Amendment protected privacy before digital communications existed, the right to compute simply legally enshrines the notion that fundamental rights apply to new technologies. The alternative—waiting until we “fully understand” all forms of future computing before protecting access to it—would mean years or decades of regulatory uncertainty that could crush innovation and leave citizens vulnerable to government overreach.
A practical, bipartisan win
Every state wants the jobs, research, and productivity gains unlocked by AI and advanced computing. At the same time, policymakers hear concerns about deception, discrimination, and infrastructure strain. A right to compute resolves that tension with a simple principle: default to freedom for lawful computation, create targeted safeguards when harms are known, and keep enforcement aimed only at bad actors.
Montana’s statute shows it can be done in a few pages. For legislatures that want to compete for entrepreneurs and new technologies in the global marketplace, the right to compute is a natural next step. It tells people everywhere the same thing: build here.
