National cyber director expands on Trump administration’s vision for AI security, industry collaboration
https://www.cybersecuritydive.com/news/ai-security-deterrence-china-tech-sean-cairncross/814952/
Publish Date: 2026-03-17 12:07:00
Source Domain: www.cybersecuritydive.com
The Trump administration will make sure that new AI technologies are secure by design, a senior U.S. official said on Tuesday.
“What we are working for in my lane is to ensure that the technical security is not seen as a barrier to that innovation, but is seen as a fundamental piece of the ability to scale it and move it as quickly as possible,” National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross said at an event hosted by the McCrary Institute for Cyber and Critical Infrastructure Security.
President Donald Trump rescinded several of his predecessor’s AI security initiatives early in his second term, arguing that they hindered innovation and focused excessively on social harms such as misinformation and bias. But he also proposed creating an information sharing group for the AI industry that would help companies stay ahead of threats. The remarks from Cairncross, a former Republican political operative who assumed leadership of the Office of the National Cyber Director last August, suggest that some officials in the Trump administration believe cybersecurity can be a selling point for AI platforms.
The administration is focused on helping American AI companies win the global competition with China for market dominance, Cairncross said. “If we’re going to win this race,” he argued, “we’re going to have to scale innovation, and we’re going to have to deploy it and get use cases and development moving.”
Pitching security in global tech tussle
The U.S. and China are also competing to dominate other key technology markets, including 5G wireless technology. Western governments have largely shunned Chinese 5G vendors such as Huawei and ZTE, embracing the U.S. intelligence community’s argument that those companies could plant backdoors in networks for China to abuse. On Tuesday, Cairncross said the Trump administration is continuing a yearslong U.S. government effort to discourage countries not aligned…
