Trump signs an executive order to vet top AI models for national security risks

“Advanced AI capabilities make our Nation stronger, but also introduce new national security considerations that require coordinated action across executive departments and agencies,” the order says.

It was not immediately clear to what extent the order differed from the one he declined to sign on May 21.

The order says the government would have only 30 days to review an AI system, a shorter time frame than some in the industry were expecting. A longer time period might have been seen as too burdensome for a fast-moving and highly competitive industry.

Trump canceled an Oval Office event with tech industry executives last month because he did not like what he saw in the earlier version of the order's text. “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 lead,” Trump told reporters at the time.

That directive was characterized as a voluntary collaboration with participating U.S.-based tech companies, including Anthropic, OpenAI and Google, many of which had been planning to have executives present at the May 21 signing event.

Juan Londoño, a policy analyst at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute, said the order is imperfect but “a step in the right direction to prepare the nation for the release of advanced AI systems.”

He applauded the White House's characterization of the process as voluntary but said he was concerned about the vagueness of how the government, led by the director of the National Security Agency, will decide which AI models qualify for scrutiny, and how it will decide which “trusted partners” get early access to them.

“This could open the door to potential weaponization against companies that have any sort of conflict with the administration,” Londoño said in a written statement.

Plans for a new AI cybersecurity directive followed Anthropic's April announcement of its most advanced AI model, called Claude Mythos, in the middle of the company's legal fight with the Trump administration over a contract dispute with the Pentagon.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and outgoing Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell soon after convened an urgent meeting with Wall Street CEOs, warning them about the risks posed by Mythos' apparent ability to find cybersecurity vulnerabilities in the world’s software. Anthropic has limited access to Mythos to only a small group of trusted partners, such as big tech companies and banks, though it said Tuesday it has expanded that group by another 150 organizations.