WASHINGTON: The Trump administration released a new artificial intelligence blueprint on Wednesday (Jul 23) that aims to loosen environmental rules and vastly expand AI exports to allies, in a bid to maintain the American edge over China in the critical technology.
President Donald Trump marked the plan’s release with a speech where he laid out the stakes of the technological arms race with China, calling it a fight that will define the 21st century.
“America is the country that started the AI race. And as president of the United States, I’m here today to declare that America is going to win it,” Trump said.
The plan, which includes some 90 recommendations, calls for the export of US AI software and hardware abroad as well as a crackdown on state laws deemed too restrictive to let it flourish, a marked departure from predecessor Joe Biden’s “high fence” approach that limited global access to coveted AI chips.
“We also have to have a single federal standard, not 50 different states regulating this industry in the future,” Trump said.
Michael Kratsios, head of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, told reporters on Wednesday the departments of Commerce and State will partner with the industry to “deliver secure full-stack AI export packages, including hardware models, software applications and standards to America’s friends and allies around the world”.
An expansion in exports of a full suite of AI products could benefit AI chip juggernauts Nvidia and AMD as well as AI model giants Alphabet’s Google, Microsoft, OpenAI and Facebook parent Meta.
Biden feared US adversaries like China could harness AI chips produced by companies like Nvidia and AMD to supercharge its military and harm allies. The former president, who left office in January, imposed a raft of restrictions on US exports of AI chips to China and other countries that it feared could divert the semiconductors to America’s top global rival.
Trump rescinded Biden’s executive order aimed at promoting competition, protecting consumers and ensuring AI was not used for misinformation. He also rescinded Biden’s so-called AI diffusion rule, which capped the amount of American AI computing capacity some countries were allowed to obtain via US AI chip imports.
“Our edge (in AI) is not something that we can sort of rest on our laurels,” Vice President JD Vance said in a separate appearance at the event, which was organized by White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks and his co-hosts on the All-In podcast.
“If we’re regulating ourselves to death and allowing the Chinese to catch up to us, that’s not something … we should blame the Chinese for … that is something we should blame our own leaders for, for having stupid policies that allow other countries to catch up with America,” Vance said.
The AI plan, according to a senior administration official, does not address national security concerns around Nvidia’s H20 chip, which powers AI models and was designed to walk right up to the line of prior restrictions on Chinese AI chip access.
Trump blocked the export of the H20 to China in April but allowed the company to resume sales earlier this month, sparking rare public criticism from fellow Republicans.
