President Donald Trump pulled back an artificial intelligence policy order on Thursday after saying he had “many” specific concerns about the draft executive order, including that it would have “inhibited” the AI industry and could have hurt U.S. competitiveness with China. The pause leaves the shape of federal oversight in the hands of the same officials, lobbyists, and tech executives who have been fighting over how much scrutiny the industry should face while advanced AI models keep moving faster than public accountability.
Trump said Friday morning, “I was hearing concerns, but I was also seeing the concerns myself. I have concerns about it, and I don’t want to approve anything until it’s done properly.” He added, “I want the industry to be able to continue to win, we’re leading by a lot over China and everybody else, and I want to continue, and I felt it was inhibiting the industry.”
Who Gets to Decide
The draft policy would have created a voluntary oversight system in which developers of advanced AI models could submit their products for review by federal agencies as much as 90 days before release. People familiar with the discussions said one concern was that the reviews could slow the rapidly evolving industry and that the voluntary vetting could one day become mandatory. The policy was being discussed for advanced AI models like Mythos.
White House officials and industry representatives said they still expected some policy to emerge from the Trump administration, but they said the executive order would now head back to the drawing board and be reworked. One tech industry lobbyist said, “I don’t think it’s dead. I think that there will be an effort to make some changes and get some sort of a framework in place, if for nothing else to address the cyber issues.” Another industry representative described the process as “a mess” and said it “wouldn’t surprise them” if the executive order ended up pulled altogether.
The Cyber Justification
National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross is expected to remain at the helm of the discussions. A White House official said Cairncross had played a leading role in the policy discussions around advanced cyber models but was not informed of the postponement until after Trump decided it. The official said, “Sean isn’t the problem.” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who has also been a lead administration official on the issue, also was not notified until after Trump had pulled the order. Senior administration officials such as Bessent and National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett have repeatedly emphasized the need for companies and government agencies to shore up cyber defenses against advanced AI models with the capacity to find holes in security systems faster than humans ever have.
The language of protection runs through the whole dispute, but the power stays concentrated at the top: federal agencies would review the systems, companies would decide what to submit, and the public gets whatever framework survives the bargaining. The proposed process was not a public handoff of control, but a managed arrangement among the state and the firms building the tools.
The Lobbyists and the Bosses
The president’s former AI czar, David Sacks, was one of the most vocal opponents of the executive order, according to a senior White House official and two people familiar with the matter. They said Sacks argued the reviews could slow the industry and hamper the United States’ ability to compete with China, and that the voluntary vetting might one day become mandatory. Sacks conveyed his argument to the president in the hours leading up to Thursday’s scheduled signing ceremony. One White House official said, “It’s truly David on a mission.” One person familiar with the discussions said Sacks was not alone and that some industry leaders also opposed the order.
Some top tech leaders said Friday they had not tried to stop the order’s signing. Elon Musk posted on X, “I still don’t know what was in that EO and the President only spoke to me after declining to sign.” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s company spokesperson Andy Stone said, “Mark didn’t speak to the president until after the event had already been canceled.” Industry representatives said tech companies were mostly coalescing around the need to address cyber risks posed by the new models. Anthropic and OpenAI have released models with advanced capabilities but not yet released them to the public, and other AI companies are expected to produce them too. One industry representative with direct knowledge of policy negotiations said tech companies were “pretty much OK” with the executive order, though they had lingering questions about which agencies would oversee the processes. That representative said, “It’s chaos, but for us, we still feel that we need to do something on cyber.”
What emerges is a familiar arrangement: the companies that build the systems, the officials who regulate them, and the lobbyists who shape the terms all remain inside the room. The draft order’s pause does not remove the hierarchy; it just sends the paperwork back for another round of negotiation among the people already holding the levers.