one year on
White House unveils sweeping AI action plan as Trump pushes data centers, exports, frontier models
The 90-plus-action plan, branded 'Winning the AI Race: America’s AI Action Plan,' leans hard on deregulation and positions AI dominance over China as a core national priority.
The White House today released ‘Winning the AI Race: America’s AI Action Plan,’ a national strategy containing over 90 federal policy actions. The plan aims to speed permitting for data centers and semiconductor fabs, partner with industry to deliver secure, full-stack AI export packages — including hardware, models, software, applications and standards — to America’s friends and allies around the world, and update federal procurement guidelines to ensure the government only contracts with frontier LLM developers whose systems are ‘objective and free from top-down ideological bias.’
The plan is built on three pillars: accelerating AI innovation, building American AI infrastructure, and leading in international AI diplomacy and security. It leans heavily on deregulation and frames AI as a race the US must win against China. ‘It’s a global competition now to lead in artificial intelligence,’ said White House AI Czar David Sacks. ‘America is the country that started the AI race,’ Trump said at an evening event hosted by the All-In Podcast and Hill & Valley Forum, declaring that ‘America is going to win it.’
Tech leaders have been divided on how AI should be regulated, but critics warn safety and civil liberties are being sidelined. A coalition of privacy advocates, labor unions and other organizations—including the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the Writers Guild of America East and the AI Now Institute—is pushing a counter ‘People’s Action Plan.’ Oren Etzioni, former CEO of the Allen Institute for AI, warned the procurement rule ‘creates all kinds of concerns and liability and complexity for the people developing these models.’
The record
The White House AI czar told reporters it is 'a global competition now to lead in artificial intelligence' and 'very important that America continue to be the dominant power in AI'
The OSTP director said the plan 'galvanizes Federal efforts to turbocharge our innovation capacity, build cutting-edge infrastructure, and lead globally, ensuring that American workers and families thrive in the AI era'
The former Allen Institute for AI CEO warned the 'ideological bias' procurement rule 'creates all kinds of concerns and liability and complexity for the people developing these models'
One year later — open only if you can handle spoilers
The plan set the template for a year of assertive federal AI action. The administration followed it with a November 2025 'Genesis Mission' executive order directing the national labs to apply AI to scientific research, and a December 11, 2025 order asserting a single national AI framework meant to override state AI laws — backed by a Justice Department AI Litigation Task Force required by early 2026. The 'Preventing Woke AI' procurement order moved into implementation through federal contracting guidance, though critics noted that an enforceable definition of ideological 'bias' remained elusive. The deregulatory, China-focused posture set out here became the through-line of US AI policy into 2026.
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