US President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order on AI and cybersecurity as soon as Thursday, according to reports from Bloomberg News. The order would revamp existing cybersecurity information-sharing programs to include AI companies while stopping short of mandatory federal approval of cutting-edge models. Instead, it would call for voluntary government testing of frontier AI systems to find and patch weaknesses across federal, state and local networks, as well as critical U.S. infrastructure, without requiring extensive new oversight. Invitations have been sent to a range of technology industry executives for a signing event Thursday at the White House, though it's unclear who will take part. The directive is set to be signed about a month after Anthropic revealed that its breakthrough Mythos model was extraordinarily adept at finding network vulnerabilities and could pose a major cybersecurity risk. Spokespeople for the White House had no immediate comment on Wednesday evening, while spokespeople for top AI developers OpenAI and Anthropic didn't immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
The order represents a middle ground between competing factions within Trump's political base. MAGA activists, including former Trump adviser Steve Bannon and right-wing political organiser Amy Kremer, have been pressing the White House to require AI developers to submit their most capable models for government security tests. In a letter sent to the White House last Friday, Kremer's faction asks Trump to require government approval before deployment, stating that AI demands a different approach because companies cannot be relied on to protect the public interest on their own. On the other side, tech industry supporters such as venture capitalist Marc Andreessen and former Trump adviser David Sacks are resistant to mandatory requirements. Sacks stepped down from his role as Trump's lead AI official and is now co-chairing the president's tech advisory committee.
The balance of power between Trump supporters has shifted due to the release of powerful new AI systems, including Anthropic's Mythos and OpenAI's GPT-5.5-Cyber. Companies warn these new models could supercharge complex cyberattacks, though some cybersecurity executives have said those fears are overblown. The Mythos' arrival prompted a battle among the president's supporters, with the outcome potentially having significant impact on the AI industry if the president's decision slows the rollout of large language models or prompts companies to change how models perform to address safety concerns. Trump administration officials have been pushing to make Mythos more widely available to federal agencies to test their networks for security flaws, and the National Security Agency has already been using it. However, White House officials recently rejected Anthropic's plans to distribute Mythos to several dozen additional companies and organizations, citing security concerns. The company has limited Mythos access for now to a handful of large tech and Wall Street companies, amid broader global alarm about the new threats it could pose to critical systems.
Tech executives remain among the president's largest political donors and most visible supporters, with Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Google's Sundar Pichai and OpenAI's Sam Altman sitting front and center at Trump's January 2025 swearing-in. Advocates for the tech industry told Reuters they want to see the US Department of Commerce's Center for AI Standards and Innovation play a leading role in the Trump administration's response to advanced AI models. However, experts caution that holding back new AI models while the federal government vets them may allow the US to gain a short-term advantage over adversaries but will not keep the technology out of enemy hands in the long term. OpenAI's Chief Global Affairs Officer Chris Lehane confirmed the company is partnering with the White House and Trump administration on a deployment strategy for GPT-5.5-Cyber, which is designed to bolster cyber defense efforts.
Voluntary federal testing of new AI models has been in place for several years, with companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic submitting their products for scrutiny by the Center for AI Standards and Innovation. The Commerce Department announced in May that Google, xAI and Microsoft had agreed to submit their AI models for security testing, though the details later disappeared from its website. The US already runs a voluntary program to evaluate AI systems before their release, and the Commerce Department recently announced an expansion of that initiative. Alphabet Inc.'s Google, Microsoft Corp. and xAI Inc. have agreed to give the government access to their models to assess the systems' capabilities and help improve security. OpenAI and Anthropic were already part of the program, led by the department's Center for AI Standards and Innovation.
