White House officials and industry representatives sorting through the confusion of Thursday’s aborted artificial intelligence policy announcement still expect to see some policy emerge from the Trump administration on advanced AI models like Mythos.
But President Donald Trump has “many” specific concerns about the draft executive order, he said in an interview Friday morning. And his decision to pull it after weeks in the making, even blindsiding some senior administration officials, underscores that a final call on this novel issue will not come easy.
“I was hearing concerns, but I was also seeing the concerns myself,” Trump said when asked if any tech executives had expressed qualms about the order. “I have concerns about it, and I don’t want to approve anything until it’s done properly.”
Trump said he was worried the order would have “inhibited” the AI industry, which he described as “one of the greatest, 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 it was inhibiting the industry,” Trump said.
A White House official and two industry representatives, who, like others in this report, were granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive policy dynamics, said they expected the executive order would now head back to the drawing board and be reworked. But few felt confident about what comes next, amid rising concerns about AI models’ potential for launching devastating cyberattacks.
“I don’t think it’s dead,” a tech industry lobbyist said. “I think that there will be an effort to make some changes and get some sort of a framework in place, if for nothing else to address the cyber issues.”
Another industry representative with knowledge of the discussions described the process as “a mess,” and said it “wouldn’t surprise them” if the executive order ends up pulled altogether.
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, the White House official and two of the industry representatives said. Cairncross has played a leading role in the policy discussions around advanced cyber models but was not informed of the order’s postponement until after Trump decided it, the White House official said.
“Sean isn’t the problem,” the official said.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who has also been a lead administration official on the issue, also wasn’t notified until after Trump had pulled 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 shore up their cyber defenses in the face of advanced AI models with the capacity to find holes in security systems faster than humans ever have.
The president’s former AI czar, David Sacks, was one of the most vocal opponents of the executive order, a senior White House official and two people familiar with the matter said. The policy would have created a voluntary oversight system in which developers of advanced AI models could submit their products to a review by federal agencies as much as 90 days before releasing them. Among his concerns was that the reviews could slow the rapidly evolving industry, hampering the United States’ ability to compete with China, and that the voluntary vetting may one day become mandatory, those people said.
Sacks conveyed his argument to the president in the hours leading up to Thursday’s scheduled signing ceremony, POLITICO previously reported. By then, administration officials had already briefed tech executives about the order and invited several of them to the event.
“It’s truly David on a mission,” said the White House official.
One person familiar with the discussions who spoke to POLITICO said Sacks was not alone, and that some industry leaders also opposed the order.
But some top tech leaders made it known Friday that they had not tried to stop the order’s signing.
“I still don’t know what was in that EO and the President only spoke to me after declining to sign,” Elon Musk — whose company SpaceX produces the Grok AI chatbot — posted on X early Friday.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also didn’t intervene with Trump before the scheduled signing, company spokesperson Andy Stone said: “Mark didn’t speak to the president until after the event had already been canceled.”
Industry has mostly coalesced around a need to address the cyber risks posed by the new models, one of the industry representatives said. So far, Anthropic and OpenAI have released models with these advanced capabilities but not yet released them to the public — and other AI companies are expected to produce them, too.
Tech companies were “pretty much OK” with the executive order, another industry representative with direct knowledge of policy negotiations said. Though they had lingering questions, including which agencies would oversee the processes, the representative added, many in industry were largely ready to welcome the order.
“It’s chaos, but for us, we still feel that we need to do something on cyber,” the tech industry representative said. “The pathway forward of, ‘Does it mean a rewrite or does it mean just putting the cyber part out?,’ that’s unclear at this time, but we maybe will have more clarity early next week.”
Aaron Mak and Maggie Miller contributed to this report.
