New Hampshire Representative Keith Ammon is drafting legislation modeled directly on Montana's SB 212, putting the year-old law back in the spotlight. Montana Governor Greg Gianforte signed the Montana Right to Compute Act (MRTCA) in April 2025, making Montana the first U.S. state to establish a legal right for citizens to own and use computational resources and AI tools.
State Senator Daniel Zolnikov, a digital privacy advocate, sponsored the bill; the Montana-based Frontier Institute backed it. Under the MRTCA, any government restrictions on compute or AI must be demonstrably necessary and narrowly tailored to a compelling public safety or health interest. The law mandates safety protocols for AI-controlled critical infrastructure, including mandatory shutdown mechanisms and annual risk management reviews.
Zolnikov framed the bill as a direct counter to Biden's Executive Order 14110 and the EU AI Act, both of which set compute-power thresholds adjustable through administrative rather than legislative action. "Montana is doing the opposite by protecting freedom and restraining the government," he said. Ammon's signal that New Hampshire is pursuing similar legislation suggests SB 212 is being used as a draft blueprint in other state capitals.
International backing for the law came from Haltia.AI and the ASIMOV Protocol, both co-founded by Dubai-based entrepreneur Talal Thabet. Haltia.AI's Lead AI Ethicist, Steve Cobb, reportedly developed the model policy behind SB 212 and launched the RightToCompute.ai campaign hub. Haltia.AI is a privacy-first, neurosymbolic AI company founded in June 2023, headquartered in Delaware with operations in Dubai; the ASIMOV Protocol is a blockchain-based AI data verification framework that came out of stealth in February 2025. Thabet has publicly argued the UAE's regulatory environment is superior to California's — a position that gives the Right to Compute campaign a secondary purpose: opposing Western AI regulation while pitching UAE-based development as an alternative global hub.
The law has a credibility problem built into its own history. A reader comment on the original Western Montana News report flagged that Gianforte also signed the first-in-the-nation TikTok ban in 2023 — a restriction on digital access, not a protection of it. That contradiction isn't just a rhetorical point. It suggests "right to compute" principles get applied selectively depending on who controls the compute. Ammon has not confirmed a timeline for introducing the New Hampshire bill.