Trump Administration locked in internal conflict over AI regulation as executive order scrapped

The Trump Administration Is at War With Itself Over AI Regulation

The Trump administration is navigating internal strife as officials try to figure out whether they can resurrect the executive order about AI regulation that President Donald Trump abruptly nixed last month, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. The conversations in the weeks since have been widely viewed as chaotic, by both key Silicon Valley players and administration officials. Some AI executives have privately told WIRED they are uncertain what a revised executive order might require, or whether one will end up being signed at all. On May 21, Trump canceled a planned signing ceremony for the order just hours before it was scheduled to take place. He told reporters at the time that it could stifle competition domestically and reduce the advantage the US currently maintains over China in the AI race. The most contentious section of the nixed executive order was a provision creating a voluntary framework in which AI labs like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google would give the White House early access to AI models ahead of their public release to evaluate cybersecurity capabilities. At its core, the push for regulation reflects a recognition inside the White House that AI is fast becoming a national security concern, given the capabilities of Anthropic's Mythos and OpenAI's GPT-5.5 models, which excel at finding vulnerabilities in legacy software systems. The effort suggests a change of heart for the administration, which initially eschewed attempts to regulate AI. The draft executive order also suggested AI labs could submit models up to 90 days before public release, though several AI executives tell WIRED their companies may not be prepared to share models that far ahead of time. Some AI leaders and aides are hopeful the executive order could come back in revised form, with some of its less controversial provisions intact. Whether the administration can resurrect an AI executive order now largely rests on the ability of top White House officials to corral competing factions, according to aides across multiple agencies involved in the process. White House chief of staff Susie Wiles has taken charge of a group of top officials pushing for the executive order to be resurrected, which also includes treasury secretary Scott Bessent and national cyber director Sean Cairncross, a former Republican political operative, the aides say. Bessent has emerged as a notable force in the administration on AI policy. In recent weeks, he has met with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and other AI executives to forge a path forward, the aides say. And he is expected to take a lead role in negotiating cross-border AI regulation with China. Trump's influential former AI czar David Sacks stands in opposition to Wiles. Sacks told Trump that the executive order would be too onerous and reportedly successfully implored him to call off the signing hours before it was set to take place. Politico earlier reported the Sacks-Wiles dynamic. In a post on X last week, Sacks wrote, "President Trump understands that unnecessary regulation is the biggest threat to innovation in America. Winning the AI race means not only beating China but also clearing bureaucratic hurdles thrown up by state legislatures and woke politicians in DC." But perhaps the biggest hurdle in getting regulation back to the table remains Trump himself, the aides said. "Resolving the infighting only matters if it gets Trump to yes," one administration official said on the condition of anonymity to speak freely about sensitive deliberations. In a statement, White House spokesperson Liz Huston said the administration has been trying to figure out how best to balance AI regulation. "The President's team is united in executing his bold agenda and maintaining this critical balance," says Huston. Other officials have distanced themselves from the executive order process amid the uncertainty. Commerce secretary Howard Lutnick has played a minimal role in the executive order process despite his interest, say two people familiar with the matter, in part because Lutnick already has early access to new AI models through a preexisting program. The program, called the Center for AI Standards and Innovation, has been the main clearinghouse for the US government for testing and evaluating frontier AI models, without implementing formal preapproval requirements. Lutnick elevated the program's profile by expanding its mandate at the start of Trump's second term. Similarly, the Pentagon has played a back-seat role in the efforts to craft the executive order. Undersecretary Emil Michael, a former top executive at Uber, has been more interested in making sure the Pentagon gets early access to frontier models, says a person familiar with the matter. A senior administration official stressed that the internal dynamics have been fluid since Trump canceled the previous iteration of the executive order. "We're back to the drawing board, so everything is still to play for," says the official.

White House internal fight stalls US AI regulation after Mythos

A three-way internal fight between the Commerce Department, intelligence agencies, and pro-industry factions has paralysed US federal AI regulation. Trump scrapped an executive order at the last minute, CAISI testing announcements were pulled from NIST's website, and no framework exists weeks after Mythos demonstrated offensive cybersecurity capabilities. The Trump administration is locked in an internal battle over artificial intelligence regulation that has paralysed federal AI policy at the moment it matters most. Three factions are fighting for control: the Commerce Department, which has been quietly building civilian testing partnerships with AI companies; national security officials who want intelligence agencies to evaluate frontier models before release; and pro-industry aides who argue that any regulation risks slowing American AI leadership. The conflict has been described by people involved as a "knife fight." The paralysis became visible in May. On 5 May, the Center for AI Standards and Innovation, housed within the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology, announced pre-deployment testing agreements with Google DeepMind, Microsoft, and Elon Musk's xAI. Days later, the announcement was removed from NIST's website with no explanation. CAISI staff were told to take the page down but not told why. The executive order that never happened The dysfunction escalated on 21 May when Trump abruptly scrapped the signing of a landmark executive order that would have formalised government partnerships with leading AI companies to vet cutting-edge models before public release. The signing ceremony was cancelled at the last minute, with Trump saying he worried the order "could dull America's edge on AI technology." The order had been months in the making. Axios obtained the draft text, which would have established a framework for pre-release safety evaluations of frontier AI models, given CAISI a formal mandate, and created reporting requirements for companies developing the most powerful systems. Silicon Valley allies within the administration lobbied against the order, arguing it would replicate the regulatory approach of Biden's AI executive order, which Trump had repealed on his first day in office. The Mythos factor The internal fight has been intensified by Anthropic's Mythos model, which discovered more than 10,000 zero-day vulnerabilities across every major operating system and web browser. The model's ability to autonomously identify and exploit software flaws alarmed national security officials, who argue that AI systems capable of this kind of offensive cybersecurity work must be evaluated by intelligence agencies before release, not by civilian standards bodies. The Office of the National Cyber Director has proposed establishing a large AI evaluation centre within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, giving spy agencies a significant new role in AI policy. The proposal comes against the backdrop of the Pentagon's supply-chain risk designation of Anthropic, which arose from the company's refusal to grant the military unrestricted access to its models. Commerce Department officials have pushed back, arguing that housing AI evaluation within the intelligence community would drive companies away from voluntary cooperation and turn safety testing into a national security function that other countries would view as weaponised. The civilian testing model, they argue, is the only approach that maintains trust with the AI industry while still providing the government with early visibility into frontier capabilities. The regulatory vacuum The result of the infighting is that the United States has no new federal AI regulation weeks after Mythos demonstrated capabilities that would have triggered immediate regulatory action in most other advanced economies. The European Union's AI Act enters full enforcement in August 2026, giving European regulators statutory authority over AI systems that the US government currently lacks. The contrast is not lost on industry. AI companies have complained about European overregulation, but the absence of any coherent US framework creates its own problems. Without clear federal rules, states are drafting their own AI legislation, companies face an unpredictable patchwork of requirements, and the government has no formal mechanism to evaluate models before deployment even when those models can find thousands of exploitable vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure. Trump's first-day repeal of Biden's AI executive order, which had established reporting thresholds for the most powerful AI models, removed the only existing federal framework. The administration's stated rationale was that Biden's approach was too heavy-handed and would stifle innovation. Sixteen months later, the replacement framework has not materialised, and the internal factions show no signs of reaching consensus. What happens next The stalled executive order may be revived in a weakened form, or the administration may pursue a more limited approach focused on voluntary commitments from AI companies rather than formal pre-release evaluation. Anthropic's own Project Glasswing, which gives vetted organisations access to Mythos for cybersecurity testing, is effectively a private-sector substitute for the government evaluation programme that the White House cannot agree on. The irony is that the administration's pro-innovation stance, which was supposed to give American AI companies a competitive advantage over more heavily regulated European and Chinese rivals, has instead produced a policy vacuum that leaves the government unable to respond coherently to the most significant AI capability demonstration of the year. The knife fight continues, and the models keep getting more powerful.