White House Unveils Complete AI Technique: “Winning the Race: America’s AI Action Plan”

Following the discharge of the Executive Order Removing Barriers to American Leadership in AI in January 2025, the White House introduced a complete new coverage initiative on July 23, 2025 titled Winning the Race: America’s AI Action Plan (“AI Action Plan”). This initiative outlines the Trump Administration’s imaginative and prescient for securing US management and dominance in synthetic intelligence and delivering its advantages to companies and customers.

The AI Action Plan is constructed on three core pillars: (I) Accelerating AI Innovation; (II) Building American AI Infrastructure; and (III) Leading in International AI Diplomacy and Security. In addition to its structural pillars, the AI Action Plan is guided by three foundational ideas:

• Empowering American Workers – The AI Action Plan emphasizes the function of U.S. staff within the nation’s AI technique, with the acknowledged intention of making certain they’re positioned to profit from the alternatives created by the AI technological revolution.
• Ensuring Ideological Neutrality – As mirrored within the “Preventing Woke AI in the Federal Government” government order, the Trump Administration intends to replace the federal procurement pointers to make sure that solely “unbiased” giant language fashions thought-about free from “ideological dogmas such as DEI” and different “partisan or ideological judgments” are eligible for presidency use.
• Protection Against Misuse – The federal authorities ought to take measures to stop superior applied sciences from being misused or stolen by malicious actors and monitor rising and unexpected dangers from AI.

This shopper alert gives an summary of the AI Action Plan’s coverage objectives and highlights key takeaways for companies.

Pillar I: Accelerate AI Innovation

The first pillar of the AI Action Plan lays out a roadmap aimed toward securing US management in synthetic intelligence by fostering an surroundings the place private-sector innovation thrives. Accordingly, the federal authorities is tasked with eradicating regulatory boundaries and actively incentivizing AI improvement and adoption. According to the AI Action Plan, “AI is far too important to smother in bureaucracy at this early stage, whether at the state or federal level.” This deregulatory method was previewed earlier throughout congressional debate over the House Budget Bill, wherein a beforehand proposed (however finally unsuccessful) provision would have preempted state enforcement of AI-related legal guidelines for ten years. While that measure failed, the AI Action Plan directs federal companies to contemplate state AI regulatory frameworks when allocating AI-related discretionary federal funding and to evaluate whether or not restrictive state insurance policies hinder innovation within the AI house.

More particularly, the AI Action Plan assigns key obligations to a number of federal companies. The Office of Management and Budget (“OMB“) is inspired to guage state legal guidelines in funding choices; nevertheless, it’s unclear how a lot affect this suggestion can have or what it’ll appear like in apply. The Federal Communications Commission (“FCC“) is tasked with evaluating whether or not state AI legal guidelines intervene with its authority below the Communications Act of 1934. Moreover, it directs the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC“) to evaluate and, the place applicable, search to change or put aside investigations, orders, consent decrees and injunctions from prior administrations which will unduly burden AI innovation.

Other key coverage aims and proposals below this pillar embody:

• Incorporate First Amendment Protections Into AI Development – The AI Action Plan states that AI programs have to be designed with freedom of speech and expression as foundational ideas, and authorities coverage mustn’t undermine that goal. To this finish, the AI Action Plan recommends that the National Institute of Standards and Technology (“NIST“) revise its AI Risk Management Framework by eradicating references to misinformation, DEI and local weather change.
• Promote Open-Source and Open-Weight AI – The AI Action Plan seeks to advertise the expansion of open-source AI by encouraging a supportive surroundings, together with increasing entry to large-scale computing energy for startups and educational researchers, and partnering with main tech firms to broaden entry to fashions, knowledge and software program instruments.
• Facilitate AI Adoption & Build an AI Evaluations Ecosystem – The AI Action Plan seeks to speed up AI adoption throughout sectors by establishing regulatory sandboxes to check and deploy new AI instruments. It additionally requires domain-specific efforts (e.g., in healthcare, vitality and agriculture) led by NIST to develop nationwide requirements and productiveness benchmarks for AI programs.
• Support Workforce Development for AI-Related Transitions – The AI Action Plan contains workforce improvement measures aimed toward supporting US staff impacted by AI, resembling directing schooling and coaching funds towards AI-related skill-building, establishing a analysis hub to check AI’s affect on the labor market and establishing fast retraining for staff displaced by AI.
• Advance Next-Generation Manufacturing Technologies – The AI Action Plan encourages funding in “next-generation” manufacturing, resembling autonomous drones, self-driving vehicles and robotics. It additionally encourages the event of public-private partnerships to deal with provide chain challenges in US robotics and drone manufacturing.
• Invest in AI-Enabled Scientific Research – The AI Action Plan requires federal funding in automated cloud-enabled laboratories throughout varied analysis fields. It recommends coverage actions to incentivize researchers to publicly launch “high-quality datasets” by contemplating the affect of scientific and engineering datasets from researchers’ prior funded efforts when reviewing funding proposals for brand spanking new initiatives. The AI Action Plan additionally recommends the implementation of insurance policies that will require federally funded researchers to reveal non-proprietary, non-sensitive knowledge utilized in AI-driven analysis and experimentation. The AI Action Plan additionally envisions constructing world-class datasets by establishing minimal knowledge high quality requirements for AI mannequin coaching.

Pillar II: Build American AI Infrastructure

The second pillar focuses on strengthening the bodily and human infrastructure essential to help AI improvement, adoption and deployment whereas safeguarding in opposition to overseas adversary threats. It requires streamlined allowing processes for knowledge facilities, semiconductor manufacturing amenities and vitality infrastructure—as an example, by means of establishing a brand new categorical exclusion below the National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA“) to cowl knowledge center-related actions, expediting environmental permits below a number of rules such because the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, and utilizing federal lands for knowledge heart development. The AI Action Plan additionally recommends implementing strict safety guardrails to stop overseas adversaries from infiltrating important infrastructure. For instance, it recommends that the home AI computing stack be constructed on American merchandise and that supporting vitality and telecommunications infrastructure stay free from overseas data and communications know-how and providers.

Key additional coverage aims and proposals below this pillar embody:

Develop a Grid to Match the Pace of AI Innovation – The Trump Administration seeks to optimize present grid assets as a lot as potential, and to include frontier vitality sources resembling enhanced geothermal, nuclear fission and fusion.

Restore American Semiconductor Manufacturing – The AI Action Plan goals to take away extraneous coverage necessities for CHIPS Act-funded semiconductor manufacturing initiatives and directs the Department of Commerce and different related federal companies to streamline rules that gradual semiconductor manufacturing efforts.

Build High-Security Data Centers for Military and Intelligence Community Usage – The AI Action Plan discusses the creation of recent technical requirements for high-security AI knowledge facilities.

Train a Skilled Workforce for AI Infrastructure – The AI Action Plan requires constructing partnerships with state and native governments and stakeholders to help the creation of industry-driven coaching packages.

Bolster Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity – The AI Action Plan proposes establishing an AI Information Sharing and Analysis Center to facilitate risk intelligence sharing throughout important infrastructure sectors, directing the Department of Homeland Security to difficulty steering to the personal sector on remediating and responding to AI-specific vulnerabilities and threats, and selling secure-by-design AI applied sciences and purposes.

Pillar III: Lead in International AI Diplomacy and Security

The third pillar outlines a method to develop the worldwide use of US-developed AI programs, computing {hardware}, and technical requirements by means of worldwide collaboration. It emphasizes leveraging US participation in diplomatic and standards-setting boards to advertise approaches to AI governance that help innovation and funding in US pursuits. Central to this technique is the objective of exporting the total AI know-how stack, together with {hardware}, fashions, software program, purposes and requirements, to nations keen to hitch a proposed “AI Alliance.”

The AI Action Plan additionally requires coordination with allies to harmonize export management measures (notably with respect to semiconductor manufacturing subsystems) and to boost know-how safety efforts. Finally, the AI Action Plan highlights the significance of sustaining the potential to evaluate nationwide safety dangers related to superior AI fashions and of integrating these assessments into broader know-how and safety insurance policies.

Key Takeaways

The AI Action Plan goals to put innovation on the core of the US AI coverage, in distinction to the extra risk-focused approaches adopted by the European Union’s AI Act and sure state-level initiatives such because the Colorado AI Act. Businesses could possibly profit from varied proposed incentives, resembling regulatory sandboxes and endorsement for open-source and open-weight AI fashions, however the sensible affect in states with present or rising AI regulatory frameworks stays unsure. The AI Action Plan’s emphasis on worldwide collaboration and export methods, such because the proposed “AI Alliance,” may additionally create alternatives for US firms to develop into new markets. On the opposite hand, companies can also must reevaluate their provide chains, partnership buildings and compliance packages to keep away from inadvertently granting adversaries or entities of concern entry to managed AI applied sciences. AI firms participating in authorities contracting, or whose merchandise might in any other case be evaluated below the forthcoming pointers on ideological neutrality, also needs to carefully monitor for developments on this space.

Importantly, firms will nonetheless be required to adjust to state-level AI legal guidelines as federal coverage to implement the AI Action Plan develops. The manner wherein federal initiatives will work together with present state necessities stays unsure and will differ considerably relying on legislative, regulatory and judicial developments. This uncertainty might persist for a while, notably in states which have already enacted or proposed complete AI regulatory frameworks. Businesses working throughout a number of jurisdictions might due to this fact expertise a interval wherein each federal and state regimes apply in parallel, with potential overlaps or inconsistencies in scope and enforcement.

Burak Haylamaz (White & Case, Staff Attorney, Los Angeles) contributed to the event of this publication.

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