🚨 Trump’s New AI Action Plan

Strategic Acceleration or Industry Wishlist?

Yesterday, the Trump Administration dropped its most aggressive AI strategy to date.

It’s 28 pages of red meat, deregulation, and industrial ambition wrapped in patriotic branding.

The stated goal?

Win the AI race—Globally. Decisively. Yesterday.

It reads like a manifesto, but it’s real policy—and if you’re building, funding, or lawyering around AI, it’s already reshaping your map.

Let’s talk about what’s real, what’s fluff, who’s getting paid, and what this means for you.

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🔧 The Real Levers (This Part Actually Moves Markets)

✅ Data Centers: Fast-Tracked, De-Regulated, Federally Backed

The plan throws red tape in the shredder.

It clears environmental reviews, opens federal land, and promises near-zero-permit AI infrastructure.

The Oracle/OpenAI/SoftBank alliance was already planning a $500B+ buildout. This plan just made their lives easier.

This is shovel-ready compute acceleration—and the U.S. just hit the gas.

✅ Regulatory Threats? Withdrawn.

The plan revokes Biden’s 2023 AI Executive Order.

It tells the FTC to cool it on tech probes.

And it warns that states with “burdensome” AI rules could lose federal funding.

This is not passive encouragement.

It’s deregulation by sword and shield.

✅ Open-Source AI Just Became a U.S. Foreign Policy Tool

Here’s what’s happening:

In AI, “open-source” models are ones where the code—and sometimes the model itself—is free for anyone to use. Startups, students, even other governments can download them, study them, and build on top.

Historically, that’s great for innovation.

Now, it’s a geopolitical power move.

The U.S. wants other countries to build their AI systems using American-made open models.

Why?

If you control the tools, you set the rules—how models behave, what values they reflect, and who defines the standard.

It’s not just about sharing.

It’s about shaping the global AI stack so it runs on American DNA.

To push that, the plan backs public programs like NAIRR—a federal initiative that gives universities and startups free access to powerful AI compute. That levels the playing field and gets more U.S.-aligned models into the world.

Bottom line: this isn’t just open-source for innovation. It’s open-source for influence.

✅ Defense, Diplomacy, and AI as National-Grade Infrastructure

The Pentagon is instructed to integrate AI across every operational layer.

Export controls are tightening.

AI chips, models, standards, and stack dominance are now formal U.S. strategy.

If AI is the new oil, this is the new OPEC—but with compute.

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🧢 The Fluff Layer (Where Policy Becomes Performance)

🧱 “AI Must Reflect American Values”

This phrase shows up everywhere.

But what are “American values” in a model output?

The plan doesn’t say.

There’s no test, no definition, no enforcement mechanism.

It’s vibes.

And vibes don’t write contracts.

⚖️ “Bias-Free” Mandates for Federal Vendors

The government will only buy from vendors who prove their models are “free from ideological bias.”

But no one defines “bias.”

Which means procurement becomes a political filter, not a legal standard.

🎤 Worker-Centered AI… Without Labor Protection

The plan talks a big game about empowering American workers.

But there’s no wage protection, no job displacement guardrails, no right to retraining.

This is a PowerPoint bullet, not a labor strategy.

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💰 Who Wins (Follow the Money and the Servers)

Big Cloud: Oracle, AWS, Microsoft, Google.

They get deregulated infrastructure, cheap land, and power buildouts. That’s trillion-dollar territory.

Defense Tech: Palantir, Anduril, Lockheed.

The plan makes AI a defense imperative. That’s contract heaven.

AI Labs + VCs: Less FTC pressure.

No disclosure mandates. Favorable IP posture. If you’re backed by AI firms like Founders Fund or Andreessen Horowitz, you just got a policy rocket booster.

Energy Producers: Especially fossil fuels.

The grid strategy is “build first, decarbonize never.” Natural gas just became an AI enabler.

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⚖️ What This Means for Operators, Lawyers, and Founders

1. Federal AI Contracts Are Now Political Tests

If your model filters hate speech or flags conspiracy content, it might be labeled “biased.”

Expect procurement contracts to come with ideological scrutiny—on top of performance metrics.

2. No Regulation = More Lawsuits, Not Fewer

Deregulation means fewer rules up front.

But it also means more litigation downstream: IP fights, bias claims, privacy violations.

Your risk exposure just shifted to the courtroom.

3. The State vs. Fed Fight Just Got Real

Blue states (California, New York) are already drafting their own AI laws.

The feds are threatening to pull funding from states that overregulate.

This turns AI into a federalism trench war.

Companies will have to navigate legal minefields across jurisdictions.

4. The Entire AI Stack Is Now Foreign Policy

Models, chips, standards, and data centers are being treated like weapons systems.

Export restrictions will tighten.

Deals with allies will come with compute strings attached.

AI is officially a tool of statecraft.

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🧠 Bottom Line

This isn’t just an AI plan.

It’s an industrial policy wrapped in a culture war, driven by national security, written by venture capitalists, and enforced with regulatory scissors.

It accelerates U.S. leadership—on terms set by the loudest founders and friendliest funders.

If you’re building in AI, you just got a tailwind.

If you’re lawyering in AI, you just got a new playbook.

This is the environment now.

Know the rules.

Or get steamrolled by someone who does.

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Need help translating this into legal or operational strategy? That’s what I do.

Let’s talk before your AI roadmap becomes a compliance landmine.

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