White House officials and industry representatives dealing with the confusion over Thursday’s artificial intelligence policy announcement still hope to see some policy emerge from the Trump administration on advanced AI designs like Mythos.
But President Donald Trump has “many” specific concerns aboutdraft executive orderhe said in an interview Friday morning. And his decision to pull it after several weeks, even turning a blind eye to some senior administration officials, underscores that the final call on this novel issue will not be easy.
“I was hearing concerns, but I was also experiencing concerns,” Trump said when asked if any tech executives had expressed concerns about the order. “I’m worried about that, and I don’t want to approve anything until it’s done properly.”
Trump said he worried the order would “hold back” the AI industry, which he described as “one of the biggest things, one of the biggest things ever.”
“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 like it’s holding the industry back,” Trump said.
A White House official and two industry representatives, who, like others in this report, did not want to be named to discuss sensitive policy developments, said they expected the executive order would now go back to the drawing board and be reworked. But few were confident about what would come next, amid growing concern about the potential for AI models to launch malicious cyber attacks.
“I don’t think it’s dead,” the tech industry lobbyist said. “I think there will be efforts to make changes and get some kind of system in place, if nothing else to address the network issues.”
Another industry representative with knowledge of the discussions described the process as “messy,” and said it “wouldn’t surprise them” if the executive order goes through at all.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross is expected to remain at the helm of the discussions, a White House official and two industry representatives said. Cairncross hasplayed the main rolein policy discussions about advanced cyber systems but was not informed of the order’s postponement until after Trump made the decision, the White House official said.
“Sean is not a problem,” the officer said.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who has also been the administration’s top official on the matter, was also not informed until after Trump lifted the order, the official said.
Senior administration officials such as Bessent and National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett have repeatedly emphasized the need for companies and government agencies to strengthen their cyber defenses in the face of advanced AI models capable of finding holes in security systems faster than humans.
The president’s former AI czar, David Sacks, wasone of the vocal opponents of the executive order,a senior White House official and two people familiar with the matter said.The policy would create a voluntary oversight system where developers of advanced AI designs could submit their products for review by government agencies for 90 days before releasing them. Among his concerns are that the reviews could slow the fast-growing industry, hampering the U.S.’s ability to compete with China, and that voluntary reviews may one day become mandatory, the people said.
Sacks made his pitch to the president hours before the signing ceremony scheduled for Thursday, POLITICO previously reported. By then, the administration officials had already informed the tech executives about the order and invited several of them to the event.
“It’s actually David on a mission,” the White House official said.
A person familiar with the discussions who spoke to POLITICO said Magunia was not alone, and that some industry leaders also opposed the order.
But some top tech leaders made it clear on Friday that they were not trying to stop the order’s signing.
“I still don’t know what was in that EO and the President only spoke to me after he refused to sign it,” Elon Musk – whose company SpaceX produces the Grok AI chatbot –published on Xearly friday
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also did not intervene with Trump before the planned signing, company spokesman Andy Stone said: “Mark did not speak to the president until after the event was canceled.”
The industry has become more united in the need to address the cyber risks posed by new forms, one of the industry representatives said. So far, Anthropic and OpenAI have produced models with this advanced capability but have yet to release them to the public – and other AI companies are expected to produce them as well.
Tech companies were “very much in line” with the executive order, another industry representative with direct knowledge of the policy talks said. Although they had lingering questions, including which agencies would oversee the process, the representative added, many in the industry were ready to welcome the order.
“It’s chaotic, but for us, we still feel that we need to do something on the Internet,” said a representative of the technology industry. “The path forward as to, ‘Does it mean a rewrite or does it mean just putting a part of the network out?,’ that’s unclear at this point, but we’ll probably have more clarity early next week.”
Aaron Mak and Maggie Miller contributed to this report.
