Trump signs order designed to give government early look at powerful AI models
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Tuesday aimed at giving the government an early look at powerful new artificial intelligence models and giving officials a chance to shore up the economy against security risks.
Trump’s advisers are divided on the question of how to respond to a new generation of artificial intelligence tools that are adept at breaking into computer systems. The president was expected to sign an order on the issue last month, but reversed course after last-minute lobbying from tech industry executives and former AI chief David Sacks.
White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and White House cyber director Sean Cairncross subsequently tried to revive the effort, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
The president reached the compromise at a high-level meeting on Monday, according to two other people with knowledge of the meeting. Bessent, Cairncross and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attended, and Sacks also attended by phone, people who described a private meeting on condition of anonymity said.
The order the president signed Tuesday is largely identical to an earlier draft obtained by the Washington Post that was rejected due to disagreements over its content. The version Trump signed narrows the government’s review period to 30 days instead of 90.
According to the decision, the participation of artificial intelligence companies will be voluntary.
“President Trump is the most pro-innovation President in American history,” said White House spokeswoman Liz Huston. “This executive order reflects his common-sense approach to collaborating with industry to balance innovation and security, strengthening America’s continued global dominance in artificial intelligence and cybersecurity.”
Sacks called the shorter 30-day review period a “game changer” in a post on “This allows our AI labs to comply with the voluntary framework without delaying the release of new models,” he wrote.
The executive order is “an important step in strengthening America’s leadership in artificial intelligence,” AI lab Anthropic wrote in a post on X on Tuesday. It was stated that the company will cooperate with the White House on the implementation of the order.
The signing of the order caps weeks of frantic work within the government following Anthropic’s April announcement that it had developed a new model called Mythos that was adept at finding vulnerabilities in software and which hackers could use to exploit them. The news set off a struggle within the Trump administration over how to respond to and manage risks posed by future AI developments; It was a major test for the president’s hands-off approach to promoting innovation at almost any cost.
Even as officials zeroed in on the idea of a review system, there were disagreements over the role of the intelligence community and whether federal oversight was impeding progress in the rapidly developing industry. Trump had previously won praise from allies in the tech industry for striking down rules introduced by President Joe Biden that required AI developers to share some information with the government.
The final executive order reflects competing interests within the Trump administration participating in the debate. It gives the government a relatively short window to act before a new AI system is released and offers a role for a wide range of civilian and national security agencies, from the Pentagon to the Commerce Department.
Trump signed the executive order privately on Tuesday, reversing the administration’s initial plans to hold a signing ceremony with executives from major artificial intelligence companies. Trump has made prolific use of executive orders as a way to control the news cycle, frequently inviting the press to the Oval Office to keep up with signatures.
Anthropic, which also makes the chatbot Claude, initially refused to release Mythos to the public; instead, it only provided access to a small group of partners to test its capabilities and tweak its systems. On Tuesday, Anthropic said it had invited 150 more organizations to the program, which it calls Glasswing.
Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the executive order, and neither did OpenAI or Google, two other leading developers of advanced artificial intelligence systems. (The Washington Post has a content partnership with OpenAI.)
The order Trump signed Tuesday directs federal agencies to strengthen the defenses of their networks and work with the private sector and local governments to facilitate access to security tools. It calls for the Treasury Department to oversee a clearinghouse that would work with the AI industry and operators of critical infrastructure components to find and patch vulnerabilities in software. The order does not specify which type of infrastructure will be used.
The decision states that the White House and the ministries of Defense, Homeland Security, Commerce and Treasury will also write a set of secret standards that will help determine which new artificial intelligence models announced by technology companies may pose security risks. The National Security Agency will be responsible for making the final decision on which ones should be subject to additional government review.
According to the decision, the government will allow up to 30 days to review the new technology with artificial intelligence companies before it is shared with other trusted third parties.
The decision gives institutions 60 days to fill out details on how the system will work. Dean Ball, a former Trump administration AI adviser, said classifying the threshold was a mistake because even most researchers wouldn’t know if they had crossed the line.
“The public and lab workers have a right to know how this works,” Ball wrote to X.
In his post, Sacks appeared to acknowledge that some in the tech industry may have concerns about increased government surveillance. He said the decision prohibits the creation of a licensing regime for artificial intelligence and that he does not believe Trump would allow such a regime to be created.
“Of course, bureaucratic task drift is always a danger and should be watched closely,” Sacks wrote.
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