Top Takeaways: President Trump's New AI Action Plan

This alert provides initial takeaways and key considerations for industry seeking to navigate an evolving regulatory domain. As we have explained previously, there are notable aspects of continuity between President Trump's AI policy and that of former President Biden's. Both have, for example, sought to spur growth and competitive edge of American AI companies, scale the government's acquisition and use of AI technologies, and streamline regulatory burdens to meet the growing energy demand to power the frontier. At the same time, today's announcements represent some notable evolution in U.S. policy, including affirmation of the Trump Administration's trend toward prioritizing AI innovation over guardrails and toward supporting greater U.S. private sector reach overseas rather than protection of sensitive technologies from foreign rivals.

In key respects, the Action Plan is not a binding document and accordingly does not direct agencies to take specific actions. Instead, the Action Plan is a series of recommended policy actions, informed by over 10,000 public comments, to promote three overarching thematic "pillars": accelerating AI innovation; building American AI infrastructure; and leading in international AI diplomacy and security. Overall, it is a reminder that private sector companies must be mindful of the Administration's AI priorities and policies while executing any AI strategy, but the Action Plan also highlights new opportunities for private sector leaders seeking to deepen collaboration with the U.S. Government on AI, benefit from U.S. Government support in augmenting AI infrastructure, and expand their footprint abroad.

Key Takeaways:

1. Reliable access to power is critical to winning the global AI race.

The Trump Administration has been focused on scaling new energy infrastructure to power frontier AI projects, along three dimensions. First, it has been seeking to leverage federal lands for the construction of new energy sources and data centers. Implementing efforts that began toward the end of the Biden Administration, Trump's Department of Energy identified 16 potential sites in April "uniquely positioned for rapid data center construction, including in-place energy infrastructure." Second, it has pushed to streamline permitting processes and environmental reviews that slow down construction. In his Day One E.O. on "Unleashing American Energy," President Trump directed agencies to simplify the permitting process to facilitate construction of infrastructure projects – prioritizing "efficiency and certainty" over "activist" objectives. And, in February, the Trump Administration issued an interim final rule that removed the Council on Environmental Quality regulations implementing the National Environmental Policy Act from the Code of Federal Regulations. Lastly, it has embraced a broader set of energy sources – including coal. In April, for example, the Trump Administration issued E.O. 14261, "Reinvigorating America Beautiful Clean Coal Country," directing the Departments of Commerce, Energy, and Interior to identify regions with suitable coal-powered infrastructure for AI data centers.

The Action Plan builds upon these efforts in several ways. First, it calls on all agencies "with significant land portfolios" to make federal lands available for data center construction and the construction of power generation facilities, broadening the aperture from the three agencies at issue in Biden's E.O. 14141 on AI infrastructure, namely, the Department of Defense ("DoD"), Department of Energy ("DOE"), and Department of Interior ("DOI"). Second, it calls for additional actions to streamline permitting processing under the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, among other statutes, and to accelerate the use of AI itself to accelerate these reviews. Lastly, it calls for actions to stabilize the grid by preventing the decommissioning of critical power generation resources, exploring new ways to harness existing energy capacity, and prioritizing the interconnection of reliable, dispatchable power sources as quickly as possible. The Action Plan does not mention coal as a key source for AI, calling instead for the embrace of new energy generation sources at the technological frontier, such as enhanced geothermal, nuclear fission, and nuclear fusion.

2. The U.S. will continue to accelerate acquisition of AI systems from the private sector to fulfil critical missions.

President Trump has prioritized efforts to reform federal procurement processes to expedite the acquisition of critical technologies, including AI, and to deepen federal collaboration with leading AI companies to advance national security objectives. For example, in April, President Trump issued the "Restoring Common Sense to Federal Procurement" E.O., directing agency heads to amend the Federal Acquisition Regulations by October 2025. Around the same time, the Office of Management and Budget issued two memoranda to agency heads directing them to develop strategies for "identifying and removing barriers" to their responsible use of AI in furtherance of their missions by October 2025 and to update their acquisition policies accordingly. Meanwhile, the Trump Administration has touted several new DoD partnerships with leading AI players to accelerate DoD adoption of advanced AI capabilities, directing them to develop strategies for "identifying and removing barriers" to their responsible use of AI in furtherance of their missions by October 2025 and to update their acquisition policies accordingly. Consistent with feedback provided by industry in the RFI, the Action Plan likewise calls for the accelerated adoption of AI in government, with targeted recommendations for how to drive adoption of AI within the DoD in particular. Notably, it calls for prioritization of DoD-led agreements with cloud service providers, operators of computing infrastructure, and other relevant private sector entities to "codify priority access" to computing resources in the event of a national emergency, so that the DoD can fully leverage these technologies in conflict. It is not clear from the Action Plan whether the Administration is seeking new legislative authorities to leverage private sector technology, or whether it is merely foreshadowing future uses of the Defense Production Act. As described below, other parts of the Action Plan suggest that the government should revise federal procurement guidelines to limit government contracts only to those developers who "ensure their systems are objective and free from "top-down ideological bias."

As expected, the Action Plan does not contemplate that the U.S. government will conduct its own training runs but rather expects that it will procure advanced AI technologies from the private sector. However, it does envision a role for the U.S. in developing, and sharing, datasets – including restricted federal data – for private sector use in AI applications.

3. While emphasizing AI "opportunity" over "safety," the Administration makes clear security and evaluation standards are not off the table.

As we have written about previously, the Administration has shied away from "safety" as a watchword for its AI policymaking. While Biden's October 2023 omnibus AI E.O. on the "Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence," ("E.O. 14110") mentioned safety 25 times, President Trump's E.O. launching the Action Plan did not mention it once. Speaking at the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris, France, on February 11, 2025, Vice President JD Vance began by saying that he was there not "to talk about AI safety" but rather to talk about "AI opportunity." And, in June, Commerce Secretary Lutnick renamed the AI Safety Institute within the National Institute of Standards and Technology ("NIST") the Center for AI Standards and Innovation ("CAISI"), further cementing a shift in posture.

Responses to the 2025 RFI surfaced a range of views represented within industry when it comes to safety standards—with some emphasizing the critical role played by the U.S. AI Safety Institute ("AISI") and others warning against "onerous compliance burdens that slow innovation," made worse, in their characterization, by fractured and complex state regulations. The Action Plan takes something of a middle approach. While it notably does not use the word "safety" in the context of AI regulation, the Action Plan includes a significant discussion about the need to promote secure-by-design AI technologies and applications and calls for the build-out of an AI "evaluations ecosystem" run by CAISI that would, among other things, evaluate and address potential national security risks related to chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosives ("CBRNE") weapons, as well as cyber risks. Moreover, it sustains focus from the Biden Executive Order on issuing and maintaining guidance to private sector entities on remediating and responding to AI-specific vulnerabilities.

4. Meanwhile, the Action Plan invites further feedback from industry on regulations that are overly burdensome.

The Action plan is focused on removing bureaucratic red tape that could impede AI innovation at the federal and state level, and recommends that the Office of Science and Technology Policy ("OSTP") launch a Request for Information ("RFI") from industry about current Federal regulations that hinder AI innovation. It further recommends that the Federal Trade Commission ("FTC") review all FTC-related investigations commenced under the previous administration to ensure that they do advance legal theories of liability that would unduly burden innovation.

While the Action Plan does not take a definitive position on the state AI moratorium that was so intensely debated in the context of the One Big Beautiful Bill, it says that the Federal government should not allow AI-related funding to be directed towards "states with burdensome AI regulations" that waste these funds and in turn recommends that OMB coordinate with federal agencies to consider limiting the provision of funders where a state's AI regulatory regime may hinder the effectiveness of that funding or award.

5. The Administration focuses on eliminating alleged ideological bias from models.

When President Biden released E.O. 14110, it included a substantial focus on the ways in which AI can be used to perpetrate unlawful discrimination and harmful biases against protected groups, from housing, to financial services, to hiring. Shortly thereafter, several agencies – including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ("CFBP"), the Department of Justice ("DOJ"), Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC"), and FTC, among others – published joint guidance on their plans to leverage existing authorities to combat unlawful discrimination arising from unrepresentative data sets, model opacity, and design issues.

The focus here is on what the Action Plan describes as "ideological bias" in certain AI models. The Action Plan alleges that some AI development has succumbed to "social engineering agendas" and, in response, calls for an update to federal procurement guidelines limiting U.S. Government contracting to AI model developers "who ensure that their systems are objective and free from top-down ideological bias." How exactly that will be determined and implemented remains to be seen.

6. The Administration will continue to prioritize onshoring of chip production in the United States and, rather than further restrict exports of controlled chips, appears to favor a "diffusion" of critical U.S. technology globally.

Just as President Biden sought to spur domestic chip manufacturing in the United States through passage of the landmark legislation like the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, President Trump has actively linked America's AI lead to its manufacturing edge. In his first days in office, President Trump announced a joint venture to invest up to $500 billion in AI infrastructure in the United States by 2029. And, over the last several months, the Administration has touted investments into his manufacturing agenda, including billions of dollars in investments to onshore production of memory chips from Taiwan. As Vice President Vance said at the AI Action Summit in Paris, the AI future "will be won by building . . . from reliable power to the manufacturing facilities that can produce the chips of the future."

The Action Plan proposes additional support for U.S. chip manufacturing. It previews, in particular, utilizing multiple federal government grant programs to support and foster enhanced U.S.-based manufacturing operations in support of AI hardware.

As we have described, there has been a lively debate between those who want to keep the most cutting-edge AI technology developed by the U.S. private sector out of the hands of the country's global rivals and those who want to see that private sector's reach extend as far and wide as possible – in part to try to crowd U.S. rivals out of the market. The Trump Administration's previous revocation of the "AI Diffusion Rule," which we wrote about here, paired with big AI deals announced with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates during the President's May trip to the Middle East, marked notable wins for the latter camp. So, too, did the recent news that the Commerce Department will reverse course and now permit certain high-end chips to be sold to China under a licensing regime.

The Action Plan emphasizes a balance to be struck between driving adoption of American AI systems, computing hardware, and standards and prevention of "adversaries from free-riding on" American innovation and investment. As part of this initiative, the Action Plan recommends strengthening advanced AI compute export control enforcement, plugging loopholes in existing semiconductor manufacturing export controls where component sub-systems are not controlled, and using the Foreign Direct Product Rule and secondary tariffs to encourage international alignment for U.S. controls.

7. The Administration envisions an ongoing role for United States in international norm-setting.

While the Biden Administration leveraged international institutions like the United Nations, OECD, Council of Europe, and G7 Hiroshima AI Process to advance norms around AI use and safety through adoption of resolutions, treaties, and international frameworks, the Trump Administration has so far not expressed sizeable interest in global rule-making. However, the Action Plan makes clear that, for America to "win" on AI, it must drive more than just adoption of American systems globally and also must play an active role in setting global standards. It calls on the Department of State ("DOS") and the Department of Commerce ("DOC") to leverage the U.S. position in international diplomatic and standard-setting bodies to "advocate for international AI governance approaches that promote innovation, reflect American values, and counter authoritarian influence." While it is not entirely clear what it will mean in practice, the Action Plan envisions a role for ongoing AI diplomacy.

8. The AI Action Plan focuses on job creation and labor displacement.

Maintaining competitive growth in emerging technologies has traditionally meant attracting a variety of talent to American industry, both domestic and international workers. The Action Plan focuses heavily on the need to "empower American workers in the age of AI" and help Americans navigate a transition to promote skilled trade jobs and assist with disclosed workers. For example, it calls for investment in training a skilled workforce for AI infrastructure, including by creating national initiatives to identify high-priority occupations, partnering with state and local governments, partnering with education and workforce system stakeholders and apprenticeships, as well as expanding training and development opportunities for students led by the Department of Education ("DOE"). However, it does not include any specific proposals suggested by several entities in the RFI for leveraging immigration authorities to bring more AI talent to the United States.

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WilmerHale attorneys are well postured to advise clients on what the AI Action Plan and its implementation mean for the private sector. This wide-spanning document portends both opportunities and risks for semiconductor producers, data center operators, AI model developers and testers, and more, and WilmerHale lawyers have the breadth of governmental experience and expertise in relevant regulatory regimes essential to navigate a path for clients through this dynamic, evolving, complex sector.

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.