U.S. President Donald Trump and White House AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks speak at the The White House Digital Assets Summit at the White House on March 7, 2025 in Washington, DC. The pair's new AI Action Plan is not so interested in regulation. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images Share on Facebook Share on X Share to Flipboard Send an Email Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Print the Article Post a Comment On Wednesday, as promised, President Donald Trump released his AI Action Plan. The news comes after he repealed his predecessor Joe Biden's 100-plus page executive order on AI just days into his term and pledged something new would be coming in July. Trump would take public comments until then, the White House and AI czar David Sacks (himself a tech mogul) said. Judging by the final 23-page document, those comments seemed to come mainly from tech companies who wanted even less regulation than they already had, which wasn't very much. What to know about the plan and what it means? Here's a breakdown. Related Stories Business Trump's End Game With The Wall Street Journal Defamation Lawsuit Business Trump's Side Deal With "New Owners" of Paramount May Hint at FCC Concessions This eviscerates Biden's actions. To be clear, Biden's actions weren't very strong, mostly by legal limitation. Unlike Europe's landmark AI Act, which has the power to really stop companies from developing high-risk AI applications and requires transparency even on lower-risk ones, the Biden plan couldn't and didn't do much. It would be enforced the under the Commerce Department and mainly came in the vein of "if we asked nicely, will you help?" Among the biggest of its provisions was that tech companies share how a model works with government agencies before they're released to the public. The enforcement mechanisms were a big question. Still, it was a flex of White House power, limited as it was, to try to keep tech companies in check before they could unleash models whose power they didn't really understand. And it set the tone: the title was "Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence." Anyway, it's pretty much all gone now. This replaces those actions with ... not much. Read through the document today and you won't see much sign of regulation. The word comes up, but mainly following the adjectives "onerous," "unnecessary" and "burdensome." You will, however, see a variant on the word compete or competition eight times. You hardly need a degree in civics or Republican semiotics to know what that means: basically, "do your thing." In any event, it confirms what we already knew: the federal government won't be much of a check on tech companies that want to build out models and deploy them on the public before they have any idea what they can do. Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen and other powerful tech-world figures who swung from the Democrats to Trump hoping to get what they want - a carte blanche - saw their strategy pay off today. Also, anyone hoping to build an energy-guzzling data center got a sop under the vague but still noteworthy "Build American AI Infrastructure ... Create Streamlined Permitting for Data Centers, Semiconductor Manufacturing Facilities, and Energy Infrastructure." Will any of it be green? "America's environmental permitting system and other regulations make it almost impossible to build this infrastructure in the United States with the speed that is required," the plan says, in case there was any doubt. For Hollywood, this means that studios and producers can use as much or as little AI as they want. Unfortunately, it also means that AI companies can encroach on Hollywood's business as much as they want. China is the threat ... and the opportunity? There is a decided contradiction in the paper and indeed much of the anti-regulator stances when it comes to China. On the one hand, China is the all-purpose bogeyman that should remove the shackles of regulation. "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," Trump says in the document by way of explaining the need for a lack of regulation. On the other hand, China is also being touted as a trading partner because, after all, tech companies benefit when they can sell to China. Trump just lifted a ban on Nvidia selling chips to China that will bring the company billions. "Export American AI to Allies and Partners. The United States must meet global demand for AI by exporting its full AI technology stack- hardware, models, software, applications, and standards - to all countries willing to join America's AI alliance," the document says. Of course it doesn't define at all who that is or what the standard would be. And while the paper notes it must "counter Chinese Influence i