Trump Postpones AI Order After Adviser, CEOs Object
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- Trump postponed his own AI and cybersecurity executive order hours before the scheduled Thursday signing, with sources saying the president and AI adviser David Sacks both 'hated' the draft, calling it 'just something doomers wanted.'
- Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, xAI CEO Elon Musk, and Sacks all spoke with Trump between Wednesday night and Thursday morning to voice objections; Meta and xAI declined to comment.
- Trump told reporters in the Oval Office: 'I didn't like certain aspects of it. I postponed it,' adding the order would 'get in the way' of the U.S. leading China in AI.
- A tech industry source questioned why the order would give the Treasury Department — rather than CISA or NIST — a leading role in finding and fixing AI model security vulnerabilities, calling the placement's 'substantive expertise' unclear.
- Leading frontier AI models already undergo voluntary testing through NIST's Center for AI Standards and Innovation, but companies were unsure whether sharing a model with the government 90 days pre-release would block allied countries from conducting their own safety tests.
- The White House's Office of the National Cyber Director is privately working on additional AI security initiatives beyond the shelved order, signaling federal AI-cybersecurity action may continue through other channels.
Why it matters: The postponement leaves no clear timeline for federal AI-cybersecurity action, and the infighting it surfaces — including the unusual proposal to put the Treasury Department in charge of AI vulnerability review instead of CISA or NIST — suggests the next draft could look substantially different. With the Office of the National Cyber Director pursuing parallel initiatives, the real fight is now over which agency, and which ideology, writes the rules.
