Insider Brief
- The White House released a sweeping AI Action Plan aimed at securing U.S. leadership in artificial intelligence through accelerated innovation, deregulation, infrastructure upgrades, and international strategy.
- The plan promotes open-source models, reduced regulatory oversight, and expanded access to computing and workforce training, while linking AI development to energy policy and national security.
- Critics warn the strategy prioritizes industry growth over privacy and safety, and raises concerns about politicized funding, global trust, and the balance between unilateral dominance and allied cooperation.
The White House has released an expansive blueprint to secure American dominance in artificial intelligence, detailing a sweeping set of federal initiatives that aim to reshape innovation, infrastructure, and international policy. The plan — called America’s AI Action Plan — seeks to propel the U.S. into a new era of economic competitiveness and national security while countering rising global competition, especially from China.
Released in July 2025 and framed as a national imperative, the 23-page document outlines the administration’s three-pillar strategy: accelerate AI innovation, build AI infrastructure, and lead in global AI diplomacy and security. The plan positions artificial intelligence not only as a transformative tool for economic growth but as the centerpiece of 21st-century geopolitical power.
It’s overall message: Build, Baby, Build.
The report states: “We need to build and maintain vast AI infrastructure and the energy to power it. To do that, we will continue to reject radical climate dogma and bureaucratic red tape, as the Administration has done since Inauguration Day. Simply put, we need to ‘Build, Baby, Build!’”
Deregulation Overlays Innovation
A central theme in the plan is the rejection of regulatory barriers seen as hindering the development and deployment of AI. The White House has moved quickly to roll back regulations enacted under the previous administration, including revoking Biden-era executive orders on AI safety. Instead, the plan promotes a deregulatory agenda that favors open-source innovation, free speech protections in AI systems, and reduced scrutiny on companies building or deploying large models.
The administration directs agencies such as the Office of Management and Budget, the Department of Commerce, and the Federal Trade Commission to review and repeal rules that may slow AI development. New funding guidelines will penalize states with what are described as burdensome AI laws, aiming to concentrate federal resources in regions more favorable to private-sector growth.
The theme is not a surprise for the White House’s AI watchers — proponents and critics, alike.
Vice President JD Vance gave a speech shortly after Trump took officer outlining the administrations desire to pull back regulations. “
We believe that excessive regulation of the AI sector could kill a transformative industry just as it’s taking off, and we’ll make every effort to encourage pro-growth AI policies,” Vance said, as reported in Wired, adding, “we feel strongly that AI must remain free from ideological bias, and that American AI will not be co-opted into a tool for authoritarian censorship.”
Open Models, Strategic Value
The plan also gives strategic priority to open-source and open-weight AI models, which it argues offer innovation benefits and broader adoption across sensitive sectors like healthcare and national security. To address cost barriers, the government will help establish financial markets for compute — such as spot or forward contracts for access to advanced chips—paralleling commodities trading.
Academic and startup communities are expected to benefit from expanded access to computing resources through the National AI Research Resource pilot. These measures are designed to help U.S.-developed open models become de facto global standards, furthering both scientific collaboration and geopolitical influence.
AI-Enabled Workforce and Education
While automation often raises concerns about job displacement, the action plan frames AI as a net positive for American workers. A broad set of federal programs will target skill development, retraining, and early education in AI-relevant trades—from software engineering to electrical work supporting data centers.
The Department of Labor, Department of Education, and National Science Foundation are tasked with overhauling curriculum and apprenticeship programs to align with new infrastructure needs. Tax guidance will encourage employer investment in worker upskilling, while federal grants will incentivize industry to co-develop training programs tied to hiring pipelines.
Labor market impacts from AI adoption will be tracked through enhanced economic surveys, with a new AI Workforce Research Hub to analyze trends and guide policy responses.
Science, Security, and the Future of Discovery
The plan elevates AI as a driver of scientific progress, calling for new investments in AI-enabled laboratories, automated experimentation platforms, and research organizations using machine learning for hypothesis generation. Federal agencies are instructed to require public release of non-sensitive datasets generated during federally funded research, positioning data as a national strategic asset.
Agencies will also fund research into AI interpretability and robustness, identified as technical areas critical for ensuring that AI systems behave predictably in high-stakes domains such as defense, energy, and healthcare. The Department of Defense and National Science Foundation will lead efforts to evaluate vulnerabilities in large models and sponsor competitions to test AI transparency and control.
Infrastructure as a Foundation
One of the most striking claims in the plan is that AI’s future demands a fundamental upgrade of the nation’s power grid. Data centers, semiconductor fabrication plants, and AI-related energy needs are forecast to outpace existing capacity. In response, the administration will streamline permitting processes, open up federal lands for infrastructure, and prioritize dispatchable energy sources like nuclear and geothermal power.
The plan encourages federal agencies to fast-track approval of power-hungry AI projects by reducing regulatory complexity under laws such as the Clean Water Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. Additionally, it calls for the creation of high-security data centers specifically designed for sensitive government workloads, with input from military and intelligence agencies.
Global AI Diplomacy and Export Control
International alignment is a key feature of the third pillar. The administration seeks to export U.S.-developed AI technologies to partner nations while preventing adversaries from acquiring the same capabilities. It proposes full-stack AI export packages and more aggressive enforcement of chip export controls, with particular scrutiny on advanced computing systems.
China is specifically named as a strategic rival. The plan outlines efforts to counter Chinese influence in international standard-setting bodies and encourages allies to adopt U.S.-aligned frameworks for AI governance and intellectual property protection. New initiatives will coordinate technology diplomacy and align export controls across the AI supply chain.
In parallel, the plan outlines proposals to patch gaps in semiconductor export controls by targeting sub-systems, not just whole machines, and calls for stronger oversight of U.S. research institutions to prevent unauthorized knowledge transfer.
Responding to Deepfakes and Biosecurity Risks
The plan also acknowledges AI’s risks, including the spread of synthetic media and the potential misuse of AI in biological threats. Federal agencies are directed to develop standards for identifying and countering deepfakes in the legal system and to enhance forensic tools to authenticate audio and video.
In biosecurity, the plan mandates stricter controls over the use of AI in genetic synthesis, including required screening for synthetic DNA ordering and stronger data-sharing between providers to detect malicious actors.
Toward an AI-Empowered Government
Inside government, the action plan calls for AI adoption across agencies. It proposes new interagency councils, procurement platforms, and workforce exchanges to ensure the public sector keeps pace with private innovation. Frontier language models will be made available to civil servants whose roles could benefit from automation, and best practices will be codified in an AI Incident Response Playbook.
The Department of Defense is directed to automate workflows, develop test environments for autonomous systems, and codify access to commercial compute resources in the event of a national emergency.
Bold Vision, Real Challenges
Taken together, America’s AI Action Plan is a bold document — one that sets clear direction for maintaining U.S. leadership in a rapidly evolving domain. But many of its objectives, from reshaping permitting rules to expanding power grid capacity, will require coordination across federal, state, and private sectors.
The plan avoids discussion of potential tensions, such as conflicts between open-source promotion and export control, or between deregulation and risk mitigation. It also remains silent on privacy protections for individuals affected by AI systems, aside from a general pledge to respect civil liberties.
As Graham Brookie of the Atlantic Council said that the plan’s success will depend not just on leading in AI, but on building an ecosystem that can evolve quickly enough to stay competitive. He notes there are three unanswered questions that loom over the implementation of America’s AI Action Plan.
With budget and staffing cuts across federal agencies, it’s unclear whether the government has the resources or expertise to deliver on its sweeping goals, especially in areas like tech diplomacy and scientific research. The plan’s proposal to tie federal funding to state-level AI regulations also raises concerns about politicized enforcement. Also, while the strategy emphasizes exporting U.S. technology to allies, it offers little detail on how the U.S. will collaborate on shared AI norms or counter China’s influence in global governance bodies.
There’s also a question on how will this balance of unilateral dominance and alliance formation will be tricky, to say the least.
“The United States can lead the way—but not through dominance alone,” said Raul Brens Jr., the director of the GeoTech Center. “An alliance is built on the stabilizing forces of trust, not tech stack supply chains or destabilizing attempts to force partners to follow one country’s standards. Building this trust will require working together to respond to the ways that AI shapes our societies, not just unilaterally fixating on its growth.”
Other critics think the plan is just a ploy for big business expansion.
The co-executive directors of the AI Now Institute — Sarah Myers West and Amba Kak — said in a statement sent to Wired the plan as “written by Big Tech interests invested in advancing AI that’s used on us, not by us.”
Nonetheless, by linking economic policy, national security, scientific progress, and global diplomacy under a unified AI strategy, the plan marks a significant escalation in U.S. government involvement in the AI race—and underscores the view that technological superiority is no longer optional, but essential.
