On Wednesday, the Trump Administration unveiled its new artificial intelligence action plan geared at keeping US efforts competitive with China. With over 90 policies recommended, it’s a wide-ranging document that, if followed, would give Silicon Valley’s most powerful companies even more leeway to grow. “We believe we’re in an AI race,” White House AI czar David Sacks said on a call ahead of the action plan’s release. “We want the United States to win that race.”
The Office of Science and Technology Policy drafted the plan, which focuses on three key “pillars” for AI strategy: accelerating AI innovation, building infrastructure, and leading international diplomacy and security. The report opens by stressing that “AI is far too important to smother in bureaucracy at this early stage, whether at the state or Federal level.” It recommends a series of policies designed to loosen regulations and burdens on the tech companies developing artificial intelligence products, like encouraging the Federal Communications Commission to “evaluate whether state AI regulations interfere with the agency’s ability to carry out its obligations and authorities under the Communications Act of 1934.”
“We need to build and maintain vast AI infrastructure and the energy to power it. To do that, we will continue to reject radical climate dogma and bureaucratic red tape, as the Administration has done since Inauguration Day,” the report reads. “Simply put, we need to ‘Build, Baby, Build!’”
In addition to releasing this report, President Donald Trump is expected to sign several executive orders later this afternoon that are expected to map onto the priorities outlined in the action plan.
AI has been a priority for the past two US administrations, but Trump’s second term has been characterized by major calibrations as the sector has exploded in prominence. In October 2023, the Biden Administration introduced an AI Executive Order designed to address numerous risks posed by rapidly advancing AI models. The order focused on issues like the potential for AI models to be used as cybersecurity weapons or to help produce chemical or biological weapons, as well as algorithmic bias. This new action plan explicitly seeks to undo efforts undertaken during the Biden Administration, like reviewing all of the Federal Trade Commission investigations it commenced “to ensure that they do not advance theories of liability that unduly burden AI innovation.”
The plan builds on the Trump Administration’s previous approach to AI. Shortly after Trump took office, Vice President JD Vance gave a speech at a major AI meeting in Paris where he laid out the new administration’s priorities. “We believe that excessive regulation of the AI sector could kill a transformative industry just as it’s taking off, and we’ll make every effort to encourage pro-growth AI policies,” Vance said, adding, “we feel strongly that AI must remain free from ideological bias, and that American AI will not be co-opted into a tool for authoritarian censorship.”
The AI Action Plan continues this crusade against “woke” AI, recommending that federal procurement guidelines are updated so that only AI companies that “ensure that their systems are objective and free from top-down ideological bias” are given contracts.
Trump has also taken steps to help build out US AI capacity domestically and abroad. A day after his inauguration, the president announced a joint venture between Softbank, Oracle, and OpenAI called Stargate that promised to build at least $100 billion in datacenter capacity in the US. In May, Trump and an entourage of tech leaders traveled to several gulf nations to announce a series of deals involving the construction of AI infrastructure across the region.
Trump’s desire to advance US AI interests is also reshaping foreign policy. During his first administration the president imposed export controls on Huawei and other Chinese firms aimed at slowing their ability to develop AI. Last week, the US government reversed restrictions on certain cutting-edge Nvidia and AMD chip sales to China, apparently shifting its focus towards helping US companies compete globally.
A variety of tech, consumer protection, and civil society organizations are already speaking out with concerns about the action plan. Sarah Myers West and Amba Kak, the co-executive directors of the AI Now Institute, characterized the plan in a statement to WIRED as “written by Big Tech interests invested in advancing AI that’s used on us, not by us.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
