President Joe Biden‘s highly anticipated artificial intelligence executive order may not last long after President-elect Donald Trump‘s inauguration next week as the incoming commander in chief pledges to reduce government regulation.
But although Trump is expected to adopt a similar, hands-off approach regarding technology regulation to that of his first administration, his political alliance with Tesla and XCEO Elon Musk introduces uncertainty into the calculus.
With less than a week remaining of his administration, Biden announced on Tuesday he is directing the Pentagon and Department of Energy to make certain parcels of federal land available for private companies to lease, decided through a competitive tender process, to build AI data centers and new clean power facilities, contending AI infrastructure is a national security and economic imperative.
“We will not let America be out-built when it comes to the technology that will define the future, nor should we sacrifice critical environmental standards and our shared efforts to protect clean air and clean water,” Biden said in a statement. “That is why today, I am signing an historic Executive Order to accelerate the speed at which we build the next generation of AI infrastructure here in America, in a way that enhances economic competitiveness, national security, AI safety, and clean energy.”
“Domestic data centers for training and operating powerful AI models will help the United States facilitate AI’s safe and secure development, harness AI in service of national security, and prevent adversaries from accessing powerful systems to the detriment of our military and national security,” the White House added in a separate statement. “It will also help prevent America from growing dependent on other countries to access powerful AI tools.”
Adam Conner, vice president for the Center for American Progress’s technology policy, praised speculation regarding Biden’s AI executive order, arguing Trump “is likely to prioritize the needs of AI-enamored tech companies at the expense of households and communities.”
“Data centers are a key to the future of AI, but that demand must be secured with clean, domestic power and paid for by the companies using them,” Conner told the Washington Examiner last month. “The Biden administration should close strong with its otherwise strong environmental and AI record.”
The order is Biden’s latest executive action regarding AI, ranging from his Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights, which he released in October 2022, to his first order in October 2023 concerning AI safety, transparency, and accountability and his October 2024 memorandum creating ethical standards for AI in national security. Earlier this week, Biden also announced new AI export controls, the Export Control Framework for AI Diffusion, to ensure China cannot access U.S. technology through third countries to advance its military.
At the same time, Trump promised during the 2024 Republican presidential primary to repeal much of Biden’s AI record and “ban the use of AI to censor the speech of American citizens on day one.” Then the Republican Party embraced a policy platform during last year’s convention that describes Biden’s AI positions as “dangerous” because they, in part, “[hinder] AI Innovation and [impose] radical leftwing ideas on the development of this technology.”
American Enterprise Institute AI and cybersecurity nonresident senior fellow Shane Tews agreed that Biden’s “strict” AI safety executive action has been particularly “overprescriptive,” adding that Trump did a good job during his first administration of clearing the “underbrush” of technology regulations that do not “make any sense in the digital economy that we’re in now.”
“Innovation needs some room to breathe,” Tews told the Washington Examiner. “You need to understand where the dark areas are. You need several people to say, yes, before you just go diving into them. And that makes sense to me, but that doesn’t mean the government needs to be doing that.”
To that end, Trump did sign his own executive order that was designed to strengthen critical infrastructure cybersecurity in 2017, with cybersecurity tending to be a bipartisan issue. But during his first administration, Trump also did not overly intervene in the technology sector, encouraging private companies to self-regulate regarding data privacy and cybersecurity instead.
But Biden’s AI agenda may have an unlikely ally in Musk, who regardless of his role as co-chair of the new Department of Government Efficiency has been a vocal critic of AI’s unintended consequences, even co-signing an open letter in 2023 in which he called for a six-month moratorium on artificial general intelligence research to provide an opportunity for careful, more thorough consideration of its ethical repercussions. Then last year, he endorsed a controversial California bill to regulate AI.
Since last year’s election, Musk has pushed the boundaries of his new alliance with Trump, most recently last month with his support of H-1B visas, the country’s largest visa category for foreign specialty skilled workers. His support of the program puts him at odds with Trump’s MAGA base, including former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, who has publicly said he wants to “run [Musk] out of here by Inauguration Day.”
“He is a truly evil guy, a very bad guy. I made it my personal thing to take this guy down,” Bannon told Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera last weekend.
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But Darrell West, a senior fellow at Brookings Institution’s Center for Technology Innovation, was not confident Trump will retain Biden’s AI executive action, notwithstanding Musk.
“He leans towards a lighter touch on regulation and his folks already have complained that AI is too tightly regulated,” the co-editor in chief of TechTank told the Washington Examiner. “There shouldn’t be many divisions on the Republican side since most of those individuals prefer deregulation.”
