U.S. President Trump postponed signing an executive order on AI safety. The order was intended to require federal agencies to establish processes for conducting safety assessments of certain AI models before their public release.
The White House has paused progress on signing.
Trump told reporters accompanying him at the White House that he was not satisfied with certain wording in the executive order, stating that some parts “could become obstacles.” He also said that the United States currently leads China and other countries in AI and does not want to implement measures that would hinder this leadership.
According to TechCrunch, citing multiple reports, an informal reason for the delay in signing the executive order is that some tech company CEOs were unable to reach Washington in time. The White House has not yet announced a new signing date.
Originally planned to establish a pre-release evaluation process
As originally intended, this executive order would require agencies such as the Office of the National Cyber Director to develop a set of security evaluation procedures for AI models, focusing on whether these models possess capabilities that could pose cybersecurity risks prior to their release.
The related discussion stems from recent concerns raised by advanced models. Reports indicate that Anthropic’s Mythos and OpenAI’s GPT-5.5 Cyber are both believed to be capable of identifying and exploiting security vulnerabilities more rapidly, prompting greater government attention to the pace and review processes for releasing high-capability models.
Security review versus competitive objectives
This delay also reflects the U.S. government’s balancing act between two objectives: on one hand, regulators seek to reduce the risk of misuse of high-capability models; on the other hand, the White House is reluctant to have new rules perceived by the tech industry as stifling innovation, particularly in the context of competing with China for AI dominance.
Current information indicates that Trump’s primary concerns focus on the wording of the executive order, rather than rejecting the direction of the security assessment entirely. If the executive order is revived, the focus will shift to the scope of the assessment, the implementing agencies, and whether it will impact the speed of model deployment.