The White House is moving forward with its plan for promoting innovation and global adoption of U.S. artificial intelligence.

President Donald Trump has signed three executive orders and unveiled a report, “Winning the AI Race: America’s AI Action Plan,” designed to cement U.S. leadership in artificial intelligence through deregulation, infrastructure investment, and ideological influence of AI systems.

Recommended Stories

• Specialist Grundle and the insatiable appetite
• How food gets in and out of Gaza — and who gets it
• The end of cosmopolitan Europe: Review of 'The Last Days of Budapest' by Adam LeBor

The preamble to the report quotes Trump: “As our global competitors race to exploit these technologies, it is a national security imperative for the United States to achieve and maintain unquestioned and unchallenged global technological dominance.”

The plan hinges on removing regulatory barriers that the White House asserts slow down AI innovation. Federal agencies are instructed to identify and repeal regulations, including environmental laws, which could hinder AI deployment.

On the heels of not including preemption of state-level AI regulations in the large budget and spending bill recently signed into law, the AI plan urges federal spending not to be directed “toward states with burdensome AI regulations that waste these funds but should also not interfere with states’ rights to pass prudent laws that are not unduly restrictive to innovation.”

The plan also advocates open-source AI development and a “try-first” culture, urging faster private-sector adoption and cautioning against overbearing bureaucratic restrictions. The administration aims to foster open‑source and open‑weight AI by improving access to computing resources for startups, researchers, and academics, and encouraging private‑public partnerships.

The plan calls for regulatory sandboxes — temporary, relaxed‑oversight environments — through agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration and the Securities and Exchange Commission. This will allow firms to deploy AI tools with fewer constraints in areas including healthcare, energy, and agriculture.

Additionally, the White House directs the Federal Trade Commission to review all investigations that may “unduly burden AI innovation,” and to evaluate “all FTC final orders, consent decrees, and injunctions, and, where appropriate, seek to modify or set aside any that unduly burden AI innovation.” This acknowledges that many of the country’s largest AI investors are Big Tech companies currently in legal proceedings with the agency over antitrust and other concerns.

The plan’s second pillar is infrastructure. It details an aggressive strategy to fast‑track permits for data centers, semiconductor factories, and energy projects. The administration proposes categorical environmental exclusions for AI infrastructure, authorizing federal agencies to override local zoning to accelerate project buildouts.

It also seeks to streamline or reduce key environmental laws. In particular, it proposes circumventing the National Environmental Policy Act for AI‑linked infrastructure projects, citing urgency and prioritizing economic growth.

But some environmental advocates warn this undermines long‑standing standards for impact assessments and community participation, said J.B. Branch, Big Tech Accountability Advocate at Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy association.

“The Trump Administration’s latest AI directive is a billion-dollar giveaway to Big Tech that puts corporate profits ahead of public safety,” Branch said in a statement announcing his group’s alternative People’s AI Action plan.

Still, the administration’s AI approach likely will appeal to supporters in the tech and energy realms.

“America must once again be a country where innovators are rewarded with a green light, not strangled with red tape,” Trump told those AI advocates gathered for the plan’s unveiling.

And the administration’s AI proposal touches on several politically charged policy areas.

The Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology is directed to strip references to misinformation, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and climate change from federal AI guidelines. While the government will only contract with large language model providers deemed “objective, free from top‑down ideological bias.”

That last directive is proving controversial even among some AI enthusiasts.

Spence Purnell and Adam Thierer, of the R Street Institute think tank, warn about the practicality of certifying AI products as ideologically or politically impartial.

“Neutrality and fairness in technological systems are worthy goals, but they do not translate into concrete, easily enforced public policies,” they write in an analysis.

They also raise possible First Amendment worries. “Government efforts to police ‘fair’ speech in AI systems — even through procurement processes — could raise some free speech concerns if done over-aggressively,” they continue.

INSIDE THE GOP BLOWUP OVER BRIAN KEMP’S GEORGIA SENATE PICK

As implementation of the plan proceeds, much will depend on whether the policy stimulates enough American innovation to stay ahead of China and others in the global race to lead in AI, or if it generates unintended environmental and social costs. That competition is viewed as paramount in crafting domestic AI policy. Marc Andreessen, a leading tech investor and AI authority, recently said that “the world, 20 years from now, is going to be running on Chinese AI or American AI.”

Additionally, the administration’s ability to justify the plan’s bias framework with concrete definitions of “ideological neutrality” and its management of energy trade-offs will be closely scrutinized.

Jessica Melugin is the director of the Center for Technology and Innovation at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and a 2025 Innovators Network Foundation antitrust and competition policy fellow.