President Donald Trump abruptly postponed the signing of a highly anticipated executive order on artificial intelligence on Thursday afternoon. The sudden decision came just hours before a scheduled White House signing ceremony. Tech company chief executives and industry representatives had already received invitations to the event, and some were already traveling to Washington when they learned that Trump had called off the ceremony.
The last-minute cancellation followed a flurry of eleventh-hour phone calls to the president. Tech industry leaders, including former White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, and Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, directly pressured Trump to pull the order. Sacks, who currently co-chairs the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, has long championed a “let them cook” philosophy for the technology sector, advocating for minimal government interference.
These tech leaders warned Trump that the draft policy would choke off innovation and hand China a massive advantage, as it races to eliminate its dependence on Western computer chips. They argued that imposing strict government hurdles on American developers would hamstring the United States in the global technological race. They convinced Trump that a slow-moving review process would only harm the American economy.
Trump echoed these industry concerns during a Thursday morning briefing at the White House. He told reporters in the Oval Office that he postponed the signing because he disliked certain aspects of the draft. Trump explained that he feared the executive order could act as a blocker for business. He pointed out that the United States currently leads the world in artificial intelligence and refuses to do anything that might jeopardize that lead.
The draft executive order aimed to increase federal oversight of advanced “frontier” AI models, such as the newly released Mythos and GPT-5.5-Cyber programs. Government staff prepared the draft in response to growing administrative concerns about the national security and cybersecurity threats posed by these powerful models. The proposal would have established a voluntary review framework, allowing federal agencies to evaluate advanced AI products up to 90 days before their public release.
Under the draft plan, agencies like the National Security Agency, the Treasury Department, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency would have evaluated potential security vulnerabilities and critical infrastructure risks. The order would have directed the Office of the National Cyber Director to coordinate with these security offices to establish an evaluation process within 60 days.
This proposed 90-day pre-screening process closely resembled key parts of the Biden administration’s 2023 AI executive order. Trump famously repealed that entire Biden order on his very first day in office in January 2025. Tech leaders pointed out the irony of Trump’s staff drafting a policy that mirrored the heavy-handed regulations he had previously torn up, which helped convince the president to reject the proposal.
The sudden cancellation highlights the immense influence that Silicon Valley executives maintain over the Trump administration. Tech giants have seen their stock prices surge by over 15 percent this year alone amid artificial intelligence hype. Even though Musk and Sacks no longer hold formal White House roles, they successfully lobbied the National Economic Council and staffers in the vice president’s office to promote an “accelerationist” approach to technology.
The issue of how to regulate artificial intelligence has deeply divided Trump’s allies and his administration. While Sacks and other tech leaders push Congress to pass a blanket law that would block state-level AI regulations, some companies have taken a different path. OpenAI has reportedly lobbied for state-level regulations, and sources claim the White House has given it a green light to pursue that strategy, despite previous administrations’ threats to block state-level laws.
For now, the postponement leaves federal AI policy in complete limbo and prolongs regulatory uncertainty for tech companies and federal agencies. Trump’s team did not announce a new date for the signing ceremony. As China continues to pour billions of dollars into its domestic chipmaking and AI industries, the debate over how Washington should police these technologies remains a major source of infighting within the administration.
