Donald Trump Indefinitely Postpones AI Executive Order After Tech Billionaires Push Back

President Donald Trump decided to indefinitely postpone signing an Executive Order on AI, even as technology company executives he had invited to be present at the White House for the signing were traveling to Washington for the ceremony.

Trump said, “I didn’t like certain aspects of it,” explaining that “I think it gets in the way of—we’re leading China. We’re leading everybody, and I don’t want to do anything that’s going to get in the way of that.”

Al-Bayadir as-Siyasi

The order under consideration would have created a system in which AI companies could voluntarily submit their most advanced models to key national security agencies for testing and vetting up to 90 days prior to releasing them.

Fortune reported that David Sacks, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg led a last-minute push against the signing, with Sacks calling Trump on Thursday to express concerns about the voluntary vetting becoming a de facto licensing regime.

Fortune also tied the fight to the debut of Anthropic’s Mythos model, which the company had voluntarily limited out of concern that its cyber capabilities could help hackers launch devastating cyber attacks against critical infrastructure.

RFI reported that Trump ordered the end of the use of Anthropic's AI in the federal administration, writing on Truth Social that he was ordering all federal agencies to immediately cease any use of Anthropic's technology.

RFI quoted Trump saying, “we do not need it, we do not want it, and we will not work with them anymore,” after Anthropic refused to open unrestricted access to its artificial intelligence to the U.S. military in the name of ethics.

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The same RFI account said Anthropic had until this Friday to yield to an ultimatum set by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and that the company insisted its software should not be used to enable mass surveillance of the American population or to build 100% autonomous weapons.

RFI added that OpenAI replaced Anthropic in the Pentagon context, with Sam Altman announcing the signing of an agreement with the Defense Department led by Pete Hegseth.

RFI also reported that Altman wrote on X that two of OpenAI’s most important safety principles are the prohibition of mass surveillance at the national level and human accountability in the use of force, including for autonomous weapons systems.

La Razón said Trump’s new executive order titled 'Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence' granted the attorney general broad powers to sue states and revoke consumer protection laws that run counter to the United States' global dominance in AI.

La Razón warned that numerous state child-safety regulations that protect minors from AI chatbots are at risk, including California's AI safety testing and disclosure law and mental health information disclosure requirements and data-collection restrictions imposed by Utah, Illinois, and Nevada.

Democracy Now! reported that Trump canceled a scheduled ceremony where he was expected to sign a new executive order on AI regulations, and it described the move as coming after consultation with Elon Musk and David Sacks and Mark Zuckerberg.

Democracy Now! also quoted journalist Karen Hao saying, “In 2025, these data center protests successfully stalled over $100 billion worth of these facilities,” and added that the protests “really does cut across political lines.”

Democracy Now! further said a federal jury in California Monday rejected Elon Musk’s $150 billion lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman, with the jury ruling Musk waited too long to sue over the matter.