The Trump administration just did something it spent years insisting it would never do: it moved toward regulating AI.
On June 2, President Trump signed an executive order titled “Promoting Advanced Artificial Intelligence Innovation and Security,” establishing a framework that asks AI developers to voluntarily give the federal government access to their most powerful models before public release.
What the executive order actually does
The order instructs a coalition of federal agencies, including the NSA, Treasury Department, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security, to build a classified benchmarking process. The goal is to identify what the administration calls “covered frontier models,” meaning AI systems with advanced cybersecurity capabilities that could pose national security risks.
Under the new framework, AI developers are encouraged to offer the government access to their models up to 30 days before public release. That window is specifically for cybersecurity evaluations, not broad content or safety reviews.
