Summarizing Trump's Artificial Intelligence Policies and AI Action Plan

The Trump administration has issued multiple Executive Orders (referred to as EOs) related to AI, and recently published an AI Action Plan. I've been following this closely and decided to share a summary of what I'm seeing.

Key Organizations

Let's start with some context around the organizations that are named or otherwise involved. This simplified chart should give you a sense of the relationships between the key organizations that determine and enact Federal priorities related to AI (or more broadly, science and technology).

At the top, we've got the Executive Office of President Trump and the White House. Directly under Trump is the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy, or OSTP.

OSTP has a broad scope, but the mandates that are relevant to this conversation include leading the National Science & Technology Council (NSTC) and the President’s Council of Advisors on Science & Technology (PCAST). The function of both of these groups are mainly advisory, with PCAST made up of technology experts from outside the government and NSTC consisting of the President's cabinet members and heads of executive agencies.

The White House Office of Management & Budget, or OMB, is responsible for enacting Trump's fiscal policies. This administration has a strong relationship with OMB and charges the organization with a lot of oversight and regulation on Federal spending, e

Executive Orders

Now let's go over the relevant EOs. Just a heads up - we're talking about the government so get ready for acronyms. I've added a list of acronyms used here and what they mean at the bottom of the page.

January 2025

Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence (Source Link)

Tasks OSTP and OMB with identifying and then suspending, revising, or rescinding existing policies or executive actions that ‘act as barriers to American AI Innovation.’

April 2025

Preparing Americans for High-Paying Skilled Trade Jobs of the Future (Source Link)

Tasks DOL, DOC, and ED with developing a plan to reach 1 million active registered apprentices, including roles related to AI and data centers.

Advancing Artificial Intelligence Education for American Youth (Source Link)

• Establishes the White House Task Force on Artificial Intelligence Education with reps from several agencies, and the Presidential AI Challenge

• Charges the task force to facilitate public-private partnerships to develop online resources focused on teaching K-12 students foundational AI literacy

• Calls for integration of AI into educator training across NSF, ED, and USDA (4H, Cooperative Extension)

• Calls for Labor to develop AI-related registered apprenticeships and leverage WIOA funding for AI training

July 2025

Preventing Woke AI in the Federal Government (Source Link)

Mandates that Federal agencies can only procure LLM-based AI tools that are developed according to ‘Unbiased AI Principles.’

Accelerating Federal Permitting of Data Center Infrastructure (Source Link)

• Enables use of federal lands and resources for data center construction

• Defines ‘data center project’ as “facility that requires greater than 100 megawatts (MW) of new load dedicated to AI inference, training, simulation, or synthetic data generation” and with at least $500 million in planned capital expenditures

• Defines ‘covered components’ of data center projects to include energy transmission infrastructure, equipment related to dispatchable baseload energy sources, semiconductors and related materials, data center equipment

• Tasks OSTP, DOC, and EPA to creatively expedite permitting

• Tasks DOD with identifying military installations that could be repurposed

• Tasks Interior with identifying relevant federal lands and resources

Promoting The Export of the American AI Technology Stack (Source Link)

• Tasks OSTP and DOC with a new ‘American AI Exports Program’ and consortium-style funding opportunity

• Program will solicit full-stack AI technology and facilitate business deals with target countries (includes hardware, data center storage, cloud services, networking, data pipelines, AI models, etc)

• Tasks Secretary of State and Economic Diplomacy Action Group (EDAG) with coordination of supporting Federal investments

AI Action Plan

The American AI Action Plan was published at the same time as the July EOs. The administration also made significant updates to the website ai.gov. According to the White House fact sheet, the plan includes more than 90 policy directives. The whole thing is structured in three 'pillars,' summarized below.

Pillar I: Accelerate AI Innovation

• Tasks OSTP, OMB, and others with large-scale survey, review, and removal of regulations at the Federal and State levels that are considered to ‘be burdensome or hinder AI innovation’

• Tasks DOC/NIST with eliminating references to misinformation, climate change, and DEI from Federal frameworks/policies; and to investigate Chinese AI models for alignment with CCP

• Promotes open-source AI models and broader access to computing resources; plus creation of ‘AI sandboxes’ and testbeds for regulatory agencies in support of faster commercial adoption of AI

• Tasks DOL, ED, NSF, others to integrate AI skill development in relevant Federal workforce training, apprenticeships, and other initiatives; qualifies AI literacy and skill development as eligible education assistance under IRS Section 132; directs funding to support retraining of people ‘impacted by AI-related job displacement’

• Promotes funding from SBIR, STTR, Chips R&D programs, Defense Production Act, OTA, and all Federal agencies for ‘developing and scaling manufacturing technologies’; identify supply chain issues related to domestic manufacturing of robotics and drones

• Calls for all Federal agencies to invest in AI research and large-scale collection of scientific data from every domain; develop new standards for data quality; new data portal for accessing government repositories; and launch a whole-genome sequencing project for wildlife on Federal lands

Pillar II: Build American AI Infrastructure

• Calls for reforms to Federal regulations impacting data center construction including new exclusions to NEPA, expansion of FAST-41, possible update to Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act, offer Federal land for data centers or power infrastructure

• Promotes investments in grid stabilization and optimization, transmission upgrades, innovations in interconnection, incentivize grid stability to reform power markets

• Tasks NIST with removing restrictions and unnecessary regulations from CHIPS programs; promotes investment in semiconductor manufacturing

• Tasks NIST, DOD, others with developing technical standards for high-security data centers and encourage agencies to use classified compute environments (sandbox/testbeds)

• Tasks DOL with large-scale initiative to identify skills related to AI and data centers, develop relevant workforce programs, increase apprenticeships

• Calls for updates to multiple frameworks and guidelines related to cyber security, threat detection, export control, and incident response

Pillar III: Lead in International AI Diplomacy and Security

• Tasks DOC with funding industry groups to export US AI technology

• Encourages chips to be made with built-in location tracking to ensure chain-of-custody security and prevent trafficking of technology

• Tasks DOD, DOC, DOE to develop a technology diplomacy strategic plan

• Promotes AI applications in biological research, tasks OSTP with regulation of companies that sell synthetic DNA and RNA for research

I hope this was helpful to literally anyone else. I plan to update this page with new information as it is released.

Acronyms and Abbreviations

AI: artificial intelligence

CCP: Chinese Communist Party

DEI: diversity, equity, and inclusion

DNA: deoxyribonucleic acid, as in the DNA that stores genetic information

DOC: United States Department of Commerce

DOD: United States Department of Defense

DOE: United States Department of Energy

DOL: United States Department of Labor

ED: United States Department of Education

EO: executive order

EPA: United States Environmental Protection Agency

IRS: United States Internal Revenue Service

LLM: large language model

NEPA: National Environmental Policy Act (link)

NIST: National Institute of Standards and Technology

NSF: National Science Foundation

OMB: Office of Management and Budget

OSTP: Office of Science and Technology Policy

OTA: other transactional authority, a procurement term

RNA: ribonucleic acid, as in the counterpart to DNA involved in genetics

SBIR: Small Business Innovation in Research grant program

STTR: Small Business Technology Transfer grant program

USDA: United States Department of Agriculture

WIOA: Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act

Disclaimer: This was written without generative AI assistance.