Trump postpones executive order focused on AI security
Trump postpones executive order focused on AI security
https://cyberscoop.com/trump-postpones-executive-order-focused-on-ai-security/
Publish Date: 2026-05-21 14:38:00
Source Domain: cyberscoop.com
President Donald Trump said he would postpone the release of an executive order that would set up a 90-day testing and vetting regime for frontier AI models, hours before the White House was set to publicly announce the signing.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office Thursday, Trump said he opted to delay the order “because I didn’t like certain aspects of it” and expressed concerns that it could harm U.S. AI industry competition with countries like China.
According to multiple sources, a draft version of the order circulating in the last 24 hours would have set up a voluntary testing regime between the U.S. federal government and frontier AI companies that would allow the government to study new models for 90 days before they’re publicly released. In addition to the government, the draft order would also facilitate access to the models for cybersecurity testers in critical infrastructure sectors, like finance and healthcare.
The draft order empowered the National Security Agency to conduct classified evaluations of frontier AI models, while the Department of the Treasury would have set up a new information sharing agreement between AI companies and cybersecurity defenders in critical infrastructure.
Other agencies, like the Office of the National Cyber Director, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the National Institute for Standards and Technology, would also be involved in defining which models are covered under the vetting regime.
In some sense, the order would formalize an already cooperative relationship between AI companies and governments like the U.S. and UK, where tech-focused agencies and regulators have already been providing access to previous models ahead of their release for testing and evaluation.
A former federal official who has seen the latest draft circulated before Thursday’s announcement told CyberScoop that based on his conversations with the administration, the order was…
