Vultures are circling
" . . . When President Donald Trump returned to power, he cast himself as the anti‑Biden on AI. First, he tore up Biden's Executive Order 14110, which had demanded "safe, secure, and trustworthy" AI. He then replaced it with his own "Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence" directive, ordering agencies to rescind or dilute rules seen as obstacles to innovation.
In short, American AI vendors could do anything they wanted. That was then. This is now.
While Trump has yet to issue a new AI Executive Order, we know his crew is forming an AI working group of tech execs and government officials to bring oversight to AI. Specifically, they're considering requiring all new "high‑risk" AI frontier models to undergo a formal government review before they can be used.
That's going to go over well.
What we do know is that National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett has said: "We're studying possibly an executive order to give a clear roadmap to everybody about how this is gonna go, and how future AIs that also potentially create vulnerabilities should go through a process so that they’re released into the wild after they've been proven safe – just like an FDA drug."
Considering that people who ignore evidence now regulate healthcare in the United States, that doesn’t fill me with much confidence. Indeed, we now know the FDA blocked the publication of studies showing that COVID-19 and shingles vaccines were safe. Are these the kinds of people we want calling the shots on AI?
Be that as it may, the Trump yes-men are framing this shift as a response to escalating cybersecurity and national‑security risks rather than as a broader embrace of EU‑style AI regulation. Yes, they're looking at Anthropic's Mythos and its potential use by hackers.
At the same time, they emphasize that they want to avoid "onerous" controls on everyday AI applications. Frontier models that could supercharge cyberwarfare, bio‑threats, or other strategic dangers are another matter.
That's quite a change from last summer when Trump babbled: "We have to grow that [AI] baby and let that baby thrive. We can't stop it. We can't stop it with politics. We can't stop it with foolish rules and even stupid rules."
Now he seems to think rules would be a good thing. Darrell West, a senior fellow at the Center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution, has suggested that Trump is returning to Biden's policy. Just don't tell him that; he'll have a fit. . . "
FROM
https://www.theregister.com/columnists/2026/05/08/trump-jumps-from-anything-goes-to-strict-regulation-ai-policy/5234687
When the factoids change, I change my mind sir Harrumph
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