Executive orders for Artificial Intelligence "dominance"

"Dominance" is a frequent word in President Trump's executive orders on new artificial intelligence policies.

Funding AI in scientific research

In November, President Trump signed an Executive Order “Launching the Genesis Mission” which pushed for a faster integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into scientific spaces. It would integrate AI with existing scientific research infrastructure such as universities, labs, and national datasets to accelerate scientific discovery and development of AI, address national technological challenges and promote “America’s technological dominance”.

This integration is intended to empower AI to test hypotheses independently and automate research workflows and would be funded by existing Department of Energy resources.

A White House proposal for national AI policy

In December Trump signed “Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence” which encourages Congress to ensure US AI dominance and sets up a task force to litigate state-level regulations of AI. It threatens grant funding for states that attempt to regulate AI, and calls for legislative recommendations from agency heads to nationalize AI policy to preempt state or local attempts to limit its use and expansion.

In March, the White House released these recommendations to Congress in a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence defined by seven specific goals. While some areas contain seemingly contradictory instructions that may be difficult to adopt, others are likely to garner bipartisan support, such as protections for children, the workforce, and consumer energy costs. Below is a summary of the Administration’s goals.

1. “Protecting children and empowering parents”: Congress should build on the Take It Down Act which passed in 2025 requiring platforms to take down sexually explicit deepfakes (AI generated images, video or audio intended to believably impersonate someone). They should empower parents to control and manage their children’s privacy and content exposure, and require AI tools to establish age verification requirements, implement features to reduce the risk of sexual exploitation and self-harm, and limit data collection and targeted advertising. It should be done through laws that don’t create “open-ended liability” for AI companies, and without infringing on states’ abilities to enforce laws that protect children.

2. “Safeguarding and strengthening American communities”: Congress should ensure that electricity costs don’t go up for Americans due to the construction or operation of AI data centers, but also streamline the permitting process for AI infrastructure construction and encourage data centers generating their own power. (Many data centers are using gas power on-site which is air pollutant and greenhouse gas heavy. Cleaner on-site alternatives are possible, but requiring these sources would mean a less streamlined permitting process.) They should also ensure that the national security community is empowered to understand and mitigate national security concerns stemming from AI technological advancements and increase efforts to combat fraud and scams performed with AI, and provide grants and tax incentives to small businesses that implement AI to ensure deployment across all industries.

3. “Respecting intellectual property rights and supporting creators”: Congress shouldn’t pass legislation to clarify whether training AI models on copyrighted materials violates copyright laws, because the Administration believes it does not. Rather, they should consider creating licensing frameworks for owners of copyrighted materials to receive compensation from AI companies, but if they go this route it shouldn’t contain any requirements for the use of such licensing. Congress should also consider a federal framework preventing unauthorized distribution of AI-generated deep-fakes, but with exceptions for things like parody, satire, news reporting, and other First Amendment protected works. These would be broad exceptions, with news reporting posing a particularly concerning threat to an already deteriorating public trust in news media.

4. “Preventing censorship and protecting free speech”: Congress should prevent the government from coercing tech companies to “ban, compel, or alter content based on partisan or ideological agendas” (except when they do it) and provide a way for Americans to seek “redress” when the government tries to censor expression or information provided by an AI platform.

5. “Enabling innovation and ensuring American AI dominance”: Congress should establish regulatory sandboxes (these are testing environments for companies to examine the performance of AI technology under designated rules) and provide resources to translate federal data sets into AI-ready formats for use in training models. They should not create any new federal rulemaking bodies to regulate AI. Instead, the uniform national approach to AI regulation should be distributed among existing regulatory bodies.

6. “Educating Americans and developing an AI-ready workforce”: Congress should use non-regulatory methods such as guidelines, strategic plans, or funding programs and incentives to incorporate AI into education and workforce training programs. They should also study the impact of task automation on worker employment to inform policies supporting the American workforce, and ensure land-grant institutions can provide AI youth development and education programs.

7. Establishing a federal policy framework: Congress should do all of the above while superseding state laws that attempt to regulate AI, without limiting states’ abilities to enforce child and consumer protections, zoning laws, and state/local governmental use of AI. However, states should not be able to regulate AI development, restrict lawful use of AI by Americans, or penalize AI companies for the way a third party (e.g. a user) uses their platforms. Under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, federal law supersedes state laws when a contradiction exists, but the Supreme Court decision in Altria Group v. Good in 2008 determined that ambiguity around the preemption of state laws should be considered in favor of the state law. This means preemptions should be well-defined by Congress in any legislation.