AI and National Security
- Rick Bonetti
- Jul 13
- 4 min read
Updated: Jul 23
President Trump's AI Policy
On January 20, 2025, President Trump issued Executive Order 14148, revocation of the Biden-Harris AI Executive Order 14110 of October 30, 2023 (Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence), "which hampered the private sector's ability to innovate in AI by imposing burdensome government requirements restricting private sector AI development and deployment."
On January 23, 2025, President Trump issued an Executive Order "to sustain and enhance America’s dominance in AI to promote human flourishing, economic competitiveness, and national security. American development of AI systems must be free from ideological bias or engineered social agendas." The order directs the development of an AI Action Plan "to sustain and enhance America’s AI dominance," The AI Action Plan is being led by:
John P. Holdren, Assistant to the President for Science & Technology
David O. Sacks, White House AI & Crypto Czar, Chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Sacks is a venture capitalist and an early executive at PayPal who launched a hit All In podcast.
Marco Rubio, Acting National Security Advisor
On June 19, 2025, AI & Crypto Czar David Sacks said, "For the U.S. to outmaneuver China in the race to be the global leader in artificial intelligence, Washington needs to trash its traditional regulatory playbook in favor of a private sector-friendly model that aims to “out-innovate the competition. '”
On July 4, 2025 President Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (H.R. 1). The May 2025 House-passed version included a provision to impose a 10‑year moratorium prohibiting states and local governments from regulating AI. The House proposed centralized AI oversight to bolster U.S. competitiveness in the global AI race. However, that provision was removed during the Senate process on July 1, 2025. Senators voted 99‑1 to strip the clause. {Gemini verified that the provision faced opposition and issues with the Byrd Rule (which controls extraneous provisions in budget reconciliation bills). While there were attempts to revise it to a 5-year "temporary pause" and tie it to federal funding, ultimately it was removed.] The final version, signed into law on July 4, 2025, contains no moratorium—states remain free to regulate AI.
Stargate Project
President Trump has courted AI luminaries, most notably Sam Altman, Larry Ellison, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg. On Trump's second day in office, he announced the Stargate Project, calling it “the largest AI infrastructure project, by far, in history.”
The Bloomberg Businessweek AI Issue of May 20, 2025, has an extensive description "Inside the First Stargate AI Data Center" in Abilene, Texas, including a fascinating 42-minute video tour with Emily Chang.
A July 2, 2025, Bloomberg article Oracle, OpenAI Expand Stargate Deal for More US Data Centers reports that OpenAI has agreed to rent a massive amount of computing power from Oracle Corp. data centers as part of its Stargate initiative and that Oracle will develop multiple data centers across the US to meet the additional demand from OpenAI, perhaps in New Mexico, Georgia, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
On May 22, 2025 OpenAI introduced the launch of Stargate UAE - "a partnership that expands global AI infrastructure and access, in coordination with the U.S. government." It is “the first international deployment of Stargate (OpenAI’s AI infrastructure platform). Stargate represents our long-term vision for building frontier-scale compute capacity around the world in service of safe, secure, and broadly beneficial AGI.” This is also the first partnership under OpenAI for Countries, their “new global initiative to help interested governments build sovereign AI capability in coordination with the U.S. government—rooted in democratic values, open markets, and trusted partnerships.”
“The agreement – which includes our partners G42, Oracle, NVIDIA, Cisco, and SoftBank, was developed in close coordination with the U.S. government, and we greatly appreciate President Trump for his support in making it possible.”
The new partnership includes dual investments:
A 1GW Stargate UAE cluster in Abu Dhabi with 200MW expected to go live in 2026
UAE investment into U.S. Stargate infrastructure, building on the U.S.-UAE AI Acceleration Partnership announced during President Trump’s visit last week.” [May 15, 2025]
The Wall Street Journal reported in July that "Just weeks after Musk’s xAI raised $10 billion through sales of stock and debt, the startup is working with a trusted financier to secure up to $12 billion more for its ambitious expansion plans, and SpaceX will invest $2 Billion Into Elon Musk’s xAI.
The Wall Street Journal reported on July 23, 2025, that the Trump Administration Pledges to Stimulate AI Use and Exports ‘Action plan’ for AI aims to boost the construction of data centers and encourage exports.
What AI says about President Trump
In a July 1, 2025 Opinion piece, the Washington Post recalls that "President Donald Trump has presented himself as a strong champion and consistent supporter of artificial intelligence. It is interesting that although Trump appears to support AI, that does not mean AI supports him, as their recent AI analysis of some of the president’s many questionable public statements shows. They posed questions to the five leading AI models:
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