The Trump administration is going after artificial intelligence (AI) — but not in a manner you may expect. Rather than slowing down America’s AI development, the focus is on accelerating it to get ahead of the game.

This initiative, outlined in “America’s AI Action Plan” released on Monday, seeks to establish U.S. dominance in AI technology. President Donald Trump has framed this as a “national security imperative” to achieve “technological dominance” and counter what he describes as “woke AI systems.” The plan is built on three core pillars: innovation, infrastructure, and international diplomacy and security.

White House AI czar David Sacks elaborated on the strategy on Wednesday. “It’s a global competition now to lead in artificial intelligence,” he stated. “And we want the United States to win that race. AI is a revolutionary technology that’s going to have profound ramifications for both the economy and for national security, so it is just very important that America continue to be the dominant power in AI.”

President Trump reinforced this vision in a statement: “Today, a new frontier of scientific discovery lies before us, defined by transformative technologies such as artificial intelligence. … Breakthroughs in these fields have the potential to reshape the global balance of power, spark entirely new industries, and revolutionize the way we live and work. As our global competitors race to exploit these technologies, it is a national security imperative for the United States to achieve and maintain unquestioned and unchallenged global technological dominance. To secure our future, we must harness the full power of American innovation.”

Reportedly, the plan outlines several key priorities to guide AI development, including protecting free speech and American values, promoting open-source and open-weight AI models, empowering American workers in the AI era, supporting next-generation manufacturing, and combating synthetic media in the legal system, among others. And to kickstart these efforts, Trump has already signed three executive orders (EO) on AI.

An aide, who presented the executive orders to Trump to sign, stated that the first EO was meant to “establish fast track permitting and ensure that the federal government is working to get data centers approved and through the permitting pipeline as quickly as possible.” The second EO, the aide said, will “promote, through various instrumentalities of the federal government, the export abroad of American AI models to ensure American AI dominance in the future.”

The final EO, per the aide’s description, is to “ensure that when the federal government procures or promotes different AI models, that those AI models are ideologically neutral, that they don’t embrace wokeism and critical race theory and all of these terrible theories that have done so much damage to our country.”

While the administration’s decisive actions have garnered praise from some quarters, they have also sparked backlash. A coalition of privacy advocates, labor unions, and other groups swiftly responded with a letter of opposition addressed to the president and Congress. “Bluntly,” they wrote, “there is no acceptable version of an AI moratorium.”

The letter argued that “we will only reap the benefits of AI if people have a reason to trust it,” warning that “federal preemption would invalidate key state laws that protect against ‘high impact’ AI, which is contrary to your administration’s executive memo 6 aiming to protect consumers from AI harms in employment, lending, education, and beyond.”

Supporters of the plan, however, see it as a visionary step forward. James Czerniawski, head of Emerging Tech Policy at the Consumer Choice Center, praised it as “a bold vision for the future of ensuring #AI leadership by the Trump admin. The Golden Age of America is made possible when we position our innovators to be as successful as possible! The economy of tomorrow starts with the building blocks laid out in this action plan!” Similarly, Michael Krastios, White House Director of Science and Technology Policy, emphasized on X: “We need to OUT-INNOVATE our competitors, BUILD AI & energy infrastructure, & EXPORT American AI around the world.”

Mónika Mercz, a Hungarian lawyer and visiting researcher at The George Washington University, focuses on how AI can be better utilized — specifically as it pertains to protecting children. In a comment to The Washington Stand, Mercz offered a nuanced perspective on the plan’s implications. She stated, “America’s AI Action Plan is a decisive step toward U.S. leadership in artificial intelligence through strategic innovation, streamlined infrastructure development, and assertive global competitiveness.” She highlighted the plan’s focus on countering Chinese influence and promoting AI exports rooted in American values, noting that it “marks a clear recognition that AI is a geopolitical and economic imperative.”

Mercz further elaborated, “By prioritizing ideological neutrality, freedom of expression, and workforce adaptability, the plan sends a strong signal that the U.S. intends to shape AI development in line with constitutional principles and market-based innovation. The move to vet federally supported AI models for factual accuracy and bias prevention is especially timely, given growing concerns about the role of generative AI in public discourse.”

She also underscored the importance of trustworthy AI systems. “I also believe that developing trustworthy and accurate AI systems is the key to mitigating AI ‘hallucinations,’ ultimately leading to their improved reliability, which means more societally positive use-cases.” However, Mercz cautioned that “an overwhelmingly pro-innovation approach has its fair share of risks.” She warned that deploying AI in high-risk sectors like defense, health care, and education requires “enforceable ethical standards, human oversight, and transparency” to prevent misuse and protect civil liberties.

According to Mercz, the plan’s emphasis on AI literacy and workforce development is a “necessary and timely response to the inevitable societal change that adapting AI into all facets of life is bringing.” Still, she stressed the need for “a set of more comprehensive guidelines” to address legal challenges.

“Overall,” Mercz concluded, “this plan signals that America is ready to compete,” but “long-term success depends on balancing speed with safety, and innovation with integrity. There are many documented cases of AI chatbots encouraging minors to commit harm to themselves and others, in addition to having highly sexualized conversations with them. While the AI Action Plan addresses some related issues, such as deepfakes, guardrails must evolve in parallel — not in opposition — to growth, in order to successfully ensure AI dominance, while keeping Americans safe.”