President Donald Trump signed an executive order on June 2 titled “Promoting Advanced Artificial Intelligence Innovation and Security,” establishing a framework for voluntary pre-release safety testing of advanced AI models. The operative word there is “voluntary.”
The order directs federal agencies, including Treasury, Defense, Commerce, and Homeland Security, to work with leading AI developers on agreements for cybersecurity testing before models go live. The review window is capped at 30 days prior to public deployment.
A softer version of a softer plan
This executive order is already the watered-down version. Last month, Trump abruptly canceled a signing event where he had planned to launch an earlier, stricter proposal alongside CEOs of leading AI firms. Several executives, invited at the last minute, couldn’t attend but signaled support for the original order.
Trump later claimed he postponed the event because the original EO might have gone too far, describing it as a potential “blocker” to AI development. David Sacks, a key advisor in the administration’s tech policy orbit, reportedly pushed against stronger regulatory provisions. His argument centered on maintaining US AI dominance, particularly relative to China.
The result is an executive order that asks nicely rather than demands. Federal agencies will promote AI use in cybersecurity and establish clearinghouses for related information sharing, but participation from private companies remains entirely optional.
Why the crypto world should pay attention
The intersection of AI and crypto has grown rapidly over the past two years. AI agent tokens, decentralized compute networks, and AI-powered trading infrastructure have carved out a meaningful niche in digital asset markets. Projects building decentralized AI training and inference, like those on networks such as Bittensor and Render, operate in a regulatory gray zone where AI policy and crypto policy increasingly overlap.
A voluntary framework, rather than a mandatory one, means these projects are unlikely to face immediate compliance headwinds from this particular order. For decentralized AI projects, the question becomes: who participates in a voluntary review when there’s no centralized entity to volunteer? A 30-day review period is manageable for OpenAI or Anthropic. It’s a conceptual puzzle for a decentralized network where model updates are proposed and approved through token governance.
The competitive framing and its limits
The administration has consistently framed AI policy through the lens of US-China competition. The logic goes something like this: regulate too aggressively and American companies lose their edge. China has actually implemented its own AI regulations, including requirements for algorithmic transparency and generative AI content labeling. The narrative that China operates in a regulatory free-for-all doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.
For the tech sector broadly, and for AI-adjacent crypto markets specifically, this translates to a policy environment where growth is prioritized over precaution. Analysts suggest there may be minimal short-term disruptions due to the non-mandatory nature of the review, which could enhance investor confidence and tech resilience.