Key Points

1. On July 23, 2025, the Trump administration released the document, "Winning the AI Race: America's AI Action Plan” (Action Plan)

   
   

2. The Action Plan focuses on accelerating AI innovation, building AI infrastructure, and leading international diplomacy and security

   
   

3. The Action Plan suggests that there is urgency in completing these policy actions, but there are no clear deadlines with which to comply

On July 23, 2025, the Trump administration released the document, "Winning the AI Race: America's AI Action Plan” (Action Plan). The authors of the Action Plan include Michael J. Kratsios (Assistant to the President for Science and Technology), David O. Sacks (Special Advisor for AI and Crypto), and Marco A. Rubio (Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs).

This move represents a dramatic shift in US AI policy. It is built on three strategic pillars: accelerating AI innovation, building AI infrastructure, and leading international diplomacy and security. The Action Plan outlines federal policy actions that are designed to cement American dominance in the global AI race. Unlike Biden’s previous safety-first approach, Trump's plan prioritizes deregulation, rapid deployment, and ideological neutrality in AI systems. Indeed, this plan is in line with Trump’s 2025 Executive Order on AI and  VP Vance’s comments from the February 2025 AI Action Summit in Paris, both of which downplayed AI safety and highlighted the importance of AI innovation, AI deregulation, and American dominance. It may be challenging for the US to assert its dominance, when the European Union is the dominant one in this regard.

What is in Trump's AI Action Plan?

Biden's October 2023 AI executive order was titled, “Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence”, and emphasized safety testing, bias mitigation, and careful deployment. On the other hand, Trump's Action Plan prioritizes speed, deregulation, and ideological neutrality. It is clear that there is some urgency contained in this Action Plan: the opening paragraph is a quote by the President himself:

“As our global competitors race to exploit these technologies, it is a national security imperative for the United States to achieve and maintain unquestioned and unchallenged global technological dominance. To secure our future, we must harness the full power of American innovation”

In fact, the first sentence of the introduction notes that the US is in a race to achieve global dominance in AI.

Pillar I: Accelerate AI Innovation

The first pillar is introduced by this statement:

“America must have the most powerful AI systems in the world, but we must also lead the world in creative and transformative application of these systems. Achieving these goals requires the Federal government to create the conditions where private-sector-led innovation can flourish”

There are several policy actions that are recommended to be taken under each of these priorities:

• Removing red tape and onerous regulation

  
  

• Ensuring that frontier AI protects free speech and American values

  
  

• Encouraging open-source and open-weight AI

  
  

• Enabling AI adoption

  
  

• Empowering American workers in the age of AI

  
  

• Supporting next-generation manufacturing

  
  

• Investing AI-enabled science

  
  

• Building world-class scientific datasets

  
  

• Advancing the science of AI

  
  

• Investing in AI interpretability, control, and robustness breakthroughs

  
  

• Building an AI evaluations ecosystem

  
  

• Accelerating AI adoption in government

  
  

• Driving adoption of AI within the department of defense

  
  

• Protecting commercial and government AI innovations

  
  

• Combatting synthetic media in the legal system

For example, under enabling AI adoption, some of the main policy actions include:

• Establish regulatory sandboxes or AI Centers of Excellence around the country where researchers, startups, and established enterprises can rapidly deploy and test AI tools while committing to open sharing of data and results. These efforts would be enabled by regulatory agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), with support from DOC through its AI evaluation initiatives at NIST

  
  

• Launch several domain-specific efforts (e.g., in healthcare, energy, and agriculture), led by NIST at DOC, to convene a broad range of public, private, and academic stakeholders to accelerate the development and adoption of national standards for AI systems and to measure how much AI increases productivity at realistic tasks in those domains

  
  

• Led by the Department of Defense (DOD) in coordination with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), regularly update joint DOD-Intelligence Community (IC) assessments of the comparative level of adoption of AI tools by the United States, its competitors, and its adversaries’ national security establishments, and establish an approach for continuous adaptation of the DOD and IC’s respective AI adoption initiatives based on these AI net assessments

  
  

• Prioritize, collect, and distribute intelligence on foreign frontier AI projects that may have national security implications, via collaboration between the IC, the Department of Energy (DOE), CAISI at DOC, the National Security Council (NSC), and OSTP

Pillar II: Build American AI Infrastructure

The second pillar is introduced by this statement:

“AI is the first digital service in modern life that challenges America to build vastly greater energy generation than we have today. American energy capacity has stagnated since the 1970s while China has rapidly built out their grid. America’s path to AI dominance depends on changing this troubling trend”

There are several policy actions that are recommended to be taken under each of these priorities:

• Creating streamlined permitting for data centres, semiconductor manufacturing facilities, and energy infrastructure while guaranteeing security

  
  

• Developing a grid to match the pace of AI innovation

  
  

• Restoring American semiconductor manufacturing

  
  

• Building high-security data centres for military and intelligence community usage

  
  

• Training a skilled workforce for AI infrastructure

  
  

• Bolstering critical infrastructure cybersecurity

  
  

• Promoting secure-by-design AI technologies and applications

  
  

• Promoting mature federal capacity for AI incident response

For instance, when it cones to training a skilled workforce, we see the following policy actions:

• Led by DOL and DOC, create a national initiative to identify high-priority occupations essential to the buildout of AI-related infrastructure. This effort would convene employers, industry groups, and other workforce stakeholders to develop or identify national skill frameworks and competency models for these roles. These frameworks would provide voluntary guidance that may inform curriculum design, credential development, and alignment of workforce investments

• Through DOL, DOE, ED, NSF, and DOC, partner with state and local governments and workforce system stakeholders to support the creation of industry-driven training programs that address workforce needs tied to priority AI infrastructure occupations. These programs should be co-developed by employers and training partners to ensure individuals who complete the program are job-ready and directly connected to the hiring process. Models could also be explored that incentivize employer upskilling of incumbent workers into priority occupations. DOC should integrate these training models as a core workforce component of its infrastructure investment programs. Funding for this strategy will be prioritized based on a program’s ability to address identified pipeline gaps and deliver talent outcomes aligned to employer demand

• Led by DOL, ED, and NSF, partner with education and workforce system stakeholders to expand early career exposure programs and pre-apprenticeships that engage middle and high school students in priority AI infrastructure occupations. These efforts should focus on creating awareness and excitement about these jobs, aligning with local employer needs, and providing on-ramps into high-quality training and Registered Apprenticeship programs

• Through the ED Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education, provide guidance to state and local CTE systems about how to update programs of study to align with priority AI infrastructure occupations. This includes refreshing curriculum, expanding dual enrollment options, and strengthening connections between CTE programs, employers, and training providers serving AI infrastructure occupations

• Led by DOL, expand the use of Registered Apprenticeships in occupations critical to AI infrastructure. Efforts should focus on streamlining the launch of new programs in priority industries and occupations and removing barriers to employer adoption, including simplifying registration, supporting intermediaries, and aligning program design with employer needs

• Led by DOE, expand the hands-on research training and development opportunities for undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate students and educators, leveraging expertise and capabilities in AI across its national laboratories. This should include partnering with community colleges and technical/career colleges to prepare new workers and help transition the existing workforce to fill critical AI roles

  
  

Pillar III: Lead in International AI Diplomacy and Security

The third pillar is introduced by this statement:

“To succeed in the global AI competition, America must do more than promote AI within its own borders. The United States must also drive adoption of American AI systems, computing hardware, and standards throughout the world. America currently is the global leader on data center construction, computing hardware performance, and models. It is imperative that the United States leverage this advantage into an enduring global alliance, while preventing our adversaries from free-riding on our innovation and investment”

There are several policy actions that are recommended to be taken under each of these priorities:

• Exporting American AI to allies and partners

  
  

• Countering Chinese influence in international governance bodies

  
  

• Strengthening AI compute export control enforcement

  
  

• Plugging loopholes in existing semiconductor manufacturing export controls

  
  

• Aligning protection measures globally

  
  

• Ensuring that the US Government is at the forefront of evaluating national security risks in frontier models

  
  

• Investing in biosecurity

By way of example, with respect to countering Chinese influence in international governance bodies, we see the following policy action:

• Led by DOS and DOC, leverage the U.S. position in international diplomatic and standard-setting bodies to vigorously advocate for international AI governance approaches that promote innovation, reflect American values, and counter authoritarian influence

Timeline

One would think that the US administration has set an aggressive timeline for implementation of the Action Plan. Key agencies including the Department of Commerce, Department of Energy, and NIST have been tasked with developing specific implementation plans in near term. The introduction states, “Simply put, we need to “Build, Baby, Build!”. But there are no clear deadlines.

The success of this ambitious agenda will likely depend on several factors: Congress's willingness to provide necessary funding, the private sector's ability to scale infrastructure rapidly, and the international community's receptiveness to American AI leadership.

What Can We Take from This Development?

Trump's Action Plan represents one of the most comprehensive technology policy initiatives in American history. How will this play out? Its success could successfully cement American dominance in AI, and its failure could leave America trailing in a competition that is viewed by many as existential.

Indeed, the promise is stated right in the Introduction of this Action Plan:

"Winning the AI race will usher in a new golden age of human flourishing, economic competitiveness, and national security for the American people”

Interestingly, the introduction also states:

“Whoever has the largest AI ecosystem will set global AI standards and reap broad economic and military benefits”

As we know, the European Union has already set the golden standard for AI regulation with its AI Act. Many countries already look to this golden standard when legislating and enforcing AI laws in their jurisdictions. It will be difficult to see how the American federal government, an administration that has not yet even created a national privacy regulation much less a  comprehensive law, will come even close to catching up to the European Union. 

In fact, it may be challenging for the US to be taken seriously in this regard; interestingly, the US suggests that this Action Plan will uphold American values and then influence all jurisdictions around the world. Again, it is the European Union that has already been an influence on the world in the technology sphere—not the US—since it has encouraged countries around the world to act in accordance with European values and laws. In my view, countries will not turn around and change their groundbreaking laws or change what laws they will comply with just to please the US.