President Donald Trump postponed a planned White House signing ceremony for a sweeping artificial intelligence executive order on Thursday, saying he stopped the measure shortly before it was set to move forward because he feared it could slow the United States’ lead in the global AI race.
Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that he disliked parts of the proposed order and viewed them as a potential obstacle for an industry he said was already ahead of foreign rivals.
“We’re leading China, we’re leading everybody,” Trump said, adding that he did not want to approve anything that could weaken that advantage. He said he believed the order “could have been a blocker.”
Draft order targeted powerful AI models
The delayed order was designed to create a channel between leading AI developers and the federal government before the public release of advanced systems, according to people familiar with the proposal cited by Reuters.
Under one version of the plan, companies building covered frontier models would be asked to provide access to the government as much as 90 days before public release. The goal was to give U.S. officials a clearer view of the capabilities and risks of the most powerful AI tools before they reached the wider market.
The proposal also included plans to give selected critical infrastructure operators, including banks, early access to those models so they could assess potential cybersecurity risks before the technology became broadly available.
Security concerns collide with Trump’s pro-growth AI agenda
The order was expected to direct the federal government to use advanced AI systems to strengthen cybersecurity protections across government networks and critical private-sector infrastructure, including sectors such as banking and healthcare.
That approach appeared to fall short of a mandatory licensing regime, but it still marked a more active role for Washington in reviewing frontier AI systems.
Supporters saw the framework as a limited safeguard against cyber and national-security risks, while critics worried that even voluntary pre-release engagement could slow product launches, pressure companies to share sensitive technology, or evolve into a more formal approval process.
The debate placed the administration between two competing priorities: moving fast enough to preserve America’s advantage over China while responding to warnings that increasingly capable AI models could expose new security weaknesses.
Trump’s decision does not appear to kill the policy outright, but it leaves the administration’s next move unclear. The White House had been preparing a high-profile event with AI industry leaders, yet the president’s remarks suggested that any final version would need to satisfy his central test of strengthening, rather than restraining, U.S. AI dominance.