WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump abruptly canceled a planned signing ceremony Thursday for an executive order addressing artificial intelligence, citing fears the directive might damage America’s competitive position in AI development.
The president announced he was delaying the signing after reviewing the order’s language, making the decision just hours before the scheduled Oval Office ceremony.
“We’re leading China, we’re leading everybody, and I don’t want to do anything that’s going to get in the way of that lead,” Trump told reporters during a separate Oval Office gathering.
The effort to establish government oversight of advanced AI systems stems from mounting concerns among banking institutions and other sectors about AI’s expanding capability to identify cybersecurity weaknesses in global software systems.
In April, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and outgoing Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell organized an emergency session with Wall Street chief executives, alerting them to cybersecurity threats from Anthropic’s AI model, Claude Mythos.
The hastily arranged meeting at Treasury Department headquarters aimed to make banks aware of potential risks from these AI models, Bessent explained during CNBC’s “Invest in America Forum” in Washington that April. “This new Anthropic model is very powerful,” he stated. “Some banks are doing a better job in cybersecurity than others, and we want to have the ability to convene them and talk about what is best practices and where they should be heading.”
The concerns prompted some Republican president allies to suggest improved methods for providing these AI tools to reliable cybersecurity professionals.
However, any strategy resembling government review of commercial AI models would represent a major departure from Trump’s campaign promises to eliminate AI safety regulations established by Democratic President Joe Biden during his second White House term.
