Trump signs downsized AI order after weeks of reversals

There doesn't really seem to be anything of substance in the actual executive order.

Section 1 doesn't say anything

Section 2 seems to boil down to: "improve cyber security and maybe use AI if we can find funding for it"

Section 3 proposes building a benchmark for evaluating cyber security performance of models that developers can choose to benchmark against. This seems like a good idea, I know Jack Clark has been a huge advocate for government's getting in with benchmarking.

Section 4 says to prioritize prosecuting cyber crimes. Not sure why they wouldn't already be prosecuted.

Section 5 doesn't say anything

Step 1: Require companies to submit product for "review"

Step 2: Complain about how the OSS/Chinese/whatever models are doing releases without approval

Step 3: Prohibit, because "safety" and "financial risks"(?)

So this is the door-shutting Altman et al have been pushing for eh?

"The final text asks some AI companies to submit their powerful new models to a voluntary government review 30 days before releasing the products to the public, a pause that would give federal agencies some time to gauge what threats the products may pose to sensitive financial, national security and other computer systems."

How specifically does that review work? I want to give federal agency Opus 4.8 now, while 4.7 has been out for a while (leaving Mythos aside for now). They have 30 days to figure out whether it poses a threat.

How do you do that? Is there an eval for this and if there is why can't they just make it public? What is the agencies objective (but proprietary?) analysis here?

> The final text asks some AI companies to submit their powerful new models to a voluntary government review 30 days before releasing the products to the public, a pause that would give federal agencies some time to gauge what threats the products may pose to sensitive financial, national security and other computer systems.

> An earlier draft of the order had called for a voluntary review as much as 90 days in advance, a provision that some AI industry officials had called too onerous, POLITICO reported last month.

A 90 days delay on the release of new models would have been insane. I guess I'm glad it's been revised at least on this specific point.

> It also directs the Justice Department to pursue criminal cases against any individuals who use AI models to hack into computer systems.

Were we not pursuing criminal cases against these individuals previously? Or have we only just decided to make crimes be against the law now?

Edit: let's all remember, by the way, this "review" period does nothing for security. It exists to allow members of the government to trade on insider knowledge.

Timing around Anthropic valuation crossing OpenAI and getting ready for IPO ...

So that the NSA can use them to find the zero-days first?

The Executive Order: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/06/prom...

IMO this isn't much more egregious than the "stop woke AI" executive order he signed in July 2025 which explicitly regulated the "ideology" of LLMs

https://www.paulhastings.com/insights/client-alerts/presiden...

There’ll be a movie written about all this someday. It’ll be great.

So going forward expect US models to respond only in ways considered appropriate by the administration. If people thought models were producing slop before... lol.

Is this legally enforceable or is it nonsense via the White House site instead of Truth Social?

> “Nothing in this section shall be construed to authorize the creation of a mandatory governmental licensing, preclearance, or permitting requirement for the development, publication, release, or distribution of new AI models, including frontier models.”

As other commenters have mentioned, it leaves the question what on earth this EO is actually good for. And still the AI industry is complaining about how onerous it is.

So this is going back to the spirit of what the Biden admin and the frontier labs wanted just recently?

https://www.bis.gov/press-release/biden-harris-administratio...

More regulated rather than unregulated (or very lightly regulated).

Most people would probably say that’s a good thing, if I read the tea leaves correctly.

BigAI contributions/bribes paying off

(probably a good thing, in this particular case)

I guess it would help if they even knew what "AI" was.

No one should have to submit any published work to government review, even voluntary. This is a basic speech issue.

Absolutely no one would be okay with authors being 'encouraged' to submit their works to a 'voluntary' review by the feds to ascertain if their ideas are threatening. AI models are NO different.

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Trump this, Trump that. Never Biden this, Biden that. His title is President, btw.

An executive order is not law. Why should any company submit their models for review?

Somewhere in all this it is crazy that the choice could be between a US company creating an AI that could doom civilization or letting China create the AI that dooms civilization. Do we want to be the first to "summon the demon" in our own fashion or let China manifest it first. Not saying this is the choice, but it would be a crazy dillema, albeit easy choice imo, if it was.