Trump’s AI policy team came into office opposing everything Biden did. Now it’s on the cusp of implementing many of the same policies

When it comes to AI, the Trump Administration has largely positioned itself as the opposite of the Biden White House—criticizing what Trump’s tech policy advisors saw as overly burdensome AI safety efforts and licensing regimes, and embracing an anti-regulation approach. Former Trump “AI and crypto czar” David Sacks best embodied this policy ethos.But the Trump Administration, according to multiple news reports, is now about to engage in a head-spinning policy pirouette. Driven by concerns about the national security implications of Anthropic’s new “Mythos” AI model, with its ability to identify and exploit cyber security vulnerabilities—as well as broader fears around cyber capabilities and dangerous misuse—the administration is now reportedly considering oversight for advanced AI models. The policies under discussion, according to news reports, include an executive order that would create a government-industry working group to examine how frontier AI systems should be evaluated before release. At the same time, the Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI) — the Trump administration’s renamed version of the Biden-era United States AI Safety Institute — announced partnerships with Google, Microsoft, and xAI to evaluate some AI models before deployment. According to an agency press release, CAISI’s agreements with frontier AI developers “enable government evaluation of AI models before they are publicly available, as well as post-deployment assessment and other research.” The agency said it has completed more than 40 such evaluations, including on state-of-the-art models that remain unreleased. In an interview on Fox Business this morning, White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said the administration is studying a possible executive order that would create “a clear road map” for how advanced AI systems should be evaluated before release. “We’re studying possibly an executive order to give a clear road m