TL;DR
AI executives who bankrolled Trump’s deregulatory push now want a formal framework after chaotic export controls and model restrictions.
The AI industry that donated heavily to elect Donald Trump with the promise that he would leave the technology alone is now calling for formal regulation. Politico reported on Friday. Executives at frontier AI companies told the outlet that they consider the administration’s ad hoc approach to model oversight more damaging than anything the Biden administration has proposed.
The change has been rapid. Trump entered his second term after a wave of donations from Silicon Valley billionaires who warned that Biden’s AI security policies would crush American innovation. He spent his first year focused on preventing states from regulating technology and signed a voluntary executive order on June 2 that asked companies to submit models for a 30-day review before release.
But the voluntary framework was overtaken by events almost immediately. The White House imposed export controls on Anthropic’s Mythos 5 and Fable 5 models on June 12. after Amazon CEO raised security concerns with Treasury Secretary. This week, the administration pressured OpenAI to restrict the release of its latest model, Sol, to approximately 20 government-approved partnersthe first time a US company launched a frontier model under a government-run access list.
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A senior AI executive, granted anonymity by Politico, called the result “a de facto European-style licensing regime.“Paul Lekas, head of global public policy at the Software and Information Industry Association, which represents major AI companies, said there are”a real need for a formal process” and that the industry wants to avoid launches based on “an ad hoc process and a single license.“
Industry representatives also told Politico that they fear putting pressure on the White House to clarify the matter. “It feels like they’re walking on eggshells a bit.“said an AI policy advisor who works with major frontier labs. Companies fear that overly aggressive lobbying could lead to export controls or other regulatory retaliation.
Saif Khan, who served as a senior advisor on critical and emerging technology at the Commerce Department during the Biden administration, called Trump’s approach an overreaction born of earlier disdain. “Because there has been a certain disregard for the risks, there has been no preparatory work, no experts have been hired,“Khan told Politico, describing the result as “opaque, almost based on vibrations.“
Khan said the administration’s actions amount to “an almost complete moratorium on new releases“That will be”begin to seriously impact the results of companies,Calling it far more damaging than anything Biden had imagined. The Biden administration’s own final rule would have imposed export controls on chips and AI model weights for certain countries, but never attempted to block domestic launches.
Dean Ball, former Trump administration official, author of the White House AI Action Plan and is Join OpenAI as Head of Strategic Futures on July 6He recognized the tension. He said the administration’s concerns are “100 percent legit“but what”They are likely overreacting to these legitimate concerns.Ball added that he’s glad the White House has come to take AI safety seriously, even if the execution is flawed.
On Friday, the administration partially rescinded Anthropic’s export ban, allowing Mythos 5 to be shared with more than 100 approved companies. But Fable 5 remains blocked for reasons the government has not explained. An OpenAI executive told Politico that the industry hopes the administration will soon finalize its June 2 executive order and replace the current crackdown with the voluntary vetting framework it originally outlined.
Lekas said that the technology industry is developing “a coordinated push for a real framework” on advanced AI rules and wants Washington to codify them, either through executive order or legislation. He warned that if AI companies can’t agree on a standardized approach to security, they will continue to receive the same unpredictable treatment.
White House spokeswoman Liz Huston defended the president’s record, citing expedited permitting for AI infrastructure and the executive order aimed at stopping regulation at the state level. “President Trump has clearly and repeatedly articulated his goal: to ensure continued American dominance in AI.“Houston said.
