What do US Presidential Executive Orders on AI Suggest About Policy Trajectory?

In this article I want to take a look at how the US Presidential tone relating to AI has shifted from Trump’s first administration, through to Biden’s term as President, and now to the beginning of Trump’s second term in office. While some characteristics remain consistent, we have seen the focus of the President’s role in shaping policy adjust from maintaining US leadership in AI, to emphasizing AI safety and trustworthiness, back to advancing US AI leadership and dominance. 

An excellent way to review these shifts would be through taking a look at each President’s executive orders and official remarks about AI.

2019, Trump’s First Term

Executive Order 13859: Maintaining American Leadership in AI

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Issued by President Donald Trump on February 11, 2019, EO 13859 aimed to maintain American leadership in AI. This was expected to be achieved by promoting technological breakthroughs, developing technical standards, training the workforce, fostering public trust, and promoting international collaboration. The EO emphasized the importance of AI for economic growth, national security, and improving the quality of life. It established the American AI Initiative, guided by five key principles:

• Driving Technological Breakthroughs: Fostering advancements in AI across government, industry, and academia to promote scientific discovery, economic competitiveness, and national security.
• Developing Technical Standards: Establishing appropriate technical standards and reducing barriers to the safe testing and deployment of AI technologies to enable the creation of new AI-related industries.
• Workforce Development: Training the American workforce with the skills needed to develop and apply AI technologies to prepare them for the economy of the future.
• Fostering Public Trust: Cultivating public trust and confidence in AI technologies while protecting civil liberties, privacy, and American values.
• Promoting International Collaboration: Encouraging an international environment that supports American AI research and innovation while protecting technological advantages and critical AI technologies from acquisition by strategic competitors and adversarial nations.

EO 13859 directed federal agencies to prioritize AI R&D investments, improve data and model accessibility for the research community, and consider AI’s implications for regulatory approaches. It also highlighted the need to protect American AI technology from acquisition by strategic competitors.

2020, Trump’s First Term

Executive Order 13960: Promoting Trustworthy AI in Government

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Building upon EO 13859, President Trump issued EO 13960 on December 3, 2020 to promote the responsible use of AI in the federal government. This EO focused on fostering public trust and confidence in AI while protecting privacy, civil rights, civil liberties, and American values. It established nine principles to guide agencies in designing, developing, acquiring, and using AI:

• Lawful and Respectful: Ensuring AI use aligns with the Constitution and applicable laws, respecting American values.
• Purposeful and Performance-Driven: Using AI where benefits outweigh risks, and risks are assessed and managed effectively.
• Accurate, Reliable, and Effective: Ensuring AI applications are consistent with their intended use cases and produce reliable outcomes.
• Safe, Secure, and Resilient: Protecting AI applications from vulnerabilities, adversarial manipulation, and malicious exploitation.
• Understandable: Ensuring the operations and outcomes of AI applications are comprehensible to subject matter experts, users, and other relevant stakeholders.
• Responsible and Traceable: Clearly defining human roles and responsibilities in AI applications and ensuring proper documentation and traceability of AI systems.
• Regularly Monitored: Regularly testing AI applications against the principles and maintaining mechanisms to address inconsistencies or unintended consequences.
• Transparent: Disclosing relevant information about AI use to appropriate stakeholders, including Congress and the public, while adhering to privacy and confidentiality requirements.
• Accountable: Implementing safeguards for the proper use and functioning of AI applications, monitoring compliance, and providing training to personnel involved in AI development and deployment.

EO 13960 required agencies to inventory their AI use cases and share them with other agencies and the public, subject to certain exceptions for sensitive use cases. It also mandated the development of a roadmap for policy guidance to support AI use.

2023, Biden’s Term

Executive Order 14110: Safe and Responsible AI Development

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While President Trump’s initial executive order on AI focused on US leadership in AI, and then soon followed up with policy related to trustworthiness and safety in AI, President Joe Biden’s EO 14110, issued on October 30, 2023, further shifted the focus from maintaining American leadership to governing AI development and use safely and responsibly. It outlined eight priorities:

• Safety and Security: Ensuring AI systems are safe, secure, and reliable, with measures to test, understand, and mitigate risks.
• Responsible Innovation: Promoting responsible innovation, competition, and collaboration in AI development and deployment.
• Support for Workers: Supporting American workers in the age of AI by adapting job training and education, ensuring fair labor practices, and providing access to opportunities created by AI.
• Equity and Civil Rights: Advancing equity and civil rights in AI development and use, preventing discrimination and bias, and ensuring fairness and justice.
• Consumer Protection: Protecting the interests of Americans who use AI and AI-enabled products by enforcing consumer protection laws and safeguarding against fraud, bias, and privacy violations.
• Privacy and Civil Liberties: Protecting Americans’ privacy and civil liberties as AI advances by ensuring lawful and secure data collection, use, and retention.
• Government Use of AI: Managing the risks from the government’s own use of AI, increasing its capacity to regulate and govern AI, and using AI to deliver better results for Americans.
• International Engagement: Leading the way to global societal, economic, and technological progress in AI by engaging with international allies and partners to manage risks, unlock potential, and promote common approaches.

EO 14110 established the White House Artificial Intelligence Council to coordinate AI-related activities across federal agencies. It also directed agencies to develop guidelines, standards, and best practices for AI safety and security, promote AI for the public good, attract and retain AI talent, invest in research and development, and facilitate access to commercial AI capabilities.

Biden’s Farewell Address

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During President Biden’s Farewell Address on January 15, 2025, he briefly made some pointed remarks about the consequential nature of AI development, and the role of US leadership in AI development specifically over China.

…

“Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation enabling the abuse of power. The free press is crumbling. Editors are disappearing. Social media is giving up on fact-checking. The truth is smothered by lies told for power and for profit. We must hold the social platforms accountable to protect our children, our families and our very democracy from the abuse of power. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence is the most consequential technology of our time, perhaps of all time.”

“Nothing offers more profound possibilities and risks for our economy, and our security, our society. For humanity. Artificial intelligence even has the potential to help us answer my call to end cancer as we know it. But unless safeguards are in place, A.I. could spawn new threats to our rights, our way of life, to our privacy, how we work, and how we protect our nation. We must make sure A.I. is safe and trustworthy and good for all humankind.”

“In the age of A.I., it’s more important than ever that the people must govern. And as the Land of Liberty, America — not China — must lead the world in the development of A.I.”

…

2025, Trump’s Second Term

Executive Order 14141: Prioritizing AI Infrastructure and Clean Energy

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With the return of Donald Trump to the presidency, EO 14141, signed on January 17, 2025, marked a return to the emphasis on American leadership in AI, but with a renewed focus on infrastructure and clean energy. This EO focused on enabling the development and operation of AI infrastructure, including data centers, in the US. It revoked EO 14110, signaling a shift away from the Biden administration’s focus on responsible AI development and towards prioritizing innovation and economic growth. EO 14141 outlined five guiding principles:

• National Security: Prioritizing AI infrastructure development to support national security missions and prevent adversaries from gaining access to critical AI systems.
• Economic Competitiveness: Fostering a vibrant technology ecosystem and ensuring the US remains competitive in the global economy.
• Clean Energy: Leading the world in operating AI data centers with clean power and accelerating the development and deployment of clean energy technologies.
• Environmental Stewardship: Minimizing the environmental impact of AI infrastructure development and promoting sustainable practices.
• Community Engagement: Ensuring high labor standards, collaborating with affected communities, and mitigating risks and potential harms.

EO 14141 directed the Secretaries of Defense and Energy to identify federal sites suitable for leasing to non-federal entities for the construction and operation of AI data centers. It also placed obligations on developers to procure clean energy resources to match data center needs and to cover all associated costs to avoid raising electricity prices for consumers. The emphasis on clean energy reflects the growing recognition of AI’s substantial energy demands and the need to ensure sustainable development.

Executive Order on Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence

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Soon after releasing EO 14141, President Trump signed an executive order on January 23, 2025 which has been purportedly aimed at removing barriers to American leadership in AI. This order focuses on streamlining regulatory processes, promoting innovation, and ensuring the US remains at the forefront of AI development. First off, the order revoked EO 14110, signaling a shift away from the Biden administration’s focus on responsible AI development and towards prioritizing innovation and economic growth. Secondly it directs the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, the Special Advisor for AI and Crypto, and the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs to develop an AI Action Plan within the next 180 days to achieve these goals. It also directs the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director to revise existing memoranda to align with the new policy. This order reflects a continued commitment to American AI leadership, even as the administration changes.

The Path Forward

EO 14110, though short-lived, represented a significant attempt to establish a comprehensive framework for responsible AI development and use in the United States. Its revocation has left a void in federal AI policy, raising concerns about the balance between innovation and ethical considerations. While the long-term impact of this policy shift remains to be seen, it is clear that the debate over AI governance in the United States is far from over. 

It will be very telling once we see the AI Action Plan that the President’s committee ultimately develops. The rapid adoption of AI raises complex ethical questions. How can we ensure that AI systems are fair, transparent, and accountable? The directive’s emphasis on regulatory reform must be balanced with robust safeguards to address these concerns and build public trust. 

However, regardless of what the future policy recommendations might be in the proposed AI Action Plan, President Trump has already taken bold action related to AI infrastructure investment with the announcement of the Stargate Project.

Stargate Project, and AI Infrastructure

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Also announced during the flurry of executive orders during President Trump’s first week back in office, the “Stargate” project is a $500 billion initiative aimed at bolstering AI infrastructure within the United States. This ambitious venture is a collaboration between tech giants OpenAI, Oracle, SoftBank, and MGX, with the ultimate goal to invest in the construction of state-of-the-art data centers designed to support the development and deployment of advanced AI technologies. This initiative aligns with President Trump’s recent executive orders geared towards positioning the U.S. at the forefront of the global AI race.

The building of such massive data centers will produce a lot of jobs, there is no doubt about that. But the energy requirements of all of these data centers is a different matter. It remains to be seen if the energy grid in the US will be able to adequately and sustainably provide the increase in capacity needed to enable the insanely huge amount of computing power that these organizations are intending to bring on line.

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As we can see, there was a brief few years where the Office of the US President saw AI safety and regulation as a serious matter to handle. President Biden called out some very important topics about AI, specifically, that although AI presents various potential boons, it also has risks. In his words: “A.I. could spawn new threats to our rights, our way of life, to our privacy, how we work, and how we protect our nation.”

But even Biden called out a need to maintain an advantage over China. And in the opening stages of President Trump’s second term we can see a very sharp focus on maintaining US “dominance” in AI with the intent to streamline AI regulation and support massive investments in AI-related infrastructure. Looking ahead to the next 4 years, I very much hope that reasonable and ethically minded people prevail in public debate, such that matters of AI safety and trustworthiness are reinstated as key policy initiatives for the US government. I find it difficult to see value in achieving “AI dominance” over other countries if the result of that mantle of leadership is a society thrown into chaos.

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