President Donald Trump canceled an executive order signing Thursday that would have granted the government authority to test frontier AI models before public release, scrapping the event hours before it was scheduled after learning that top AI lab CEOs declined to attend on 24 hours' notice. Some executives who rearranged their schedules were midair to the Oval Office when they learned the trip was canceled.
The order sought government testing windows up to 90 days prior to model releases, while AI labs pushed for a 14-day timeline. OpenAI supported the signing, but Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg reportedly lobbied Trump to call it off. David Sacks, whose special government employee designation expired in March, joined the effort to delay the order.
Trump told reporters he decided against signing because he did not like certain aspects of the order, offering no further details. He stressed that government safety testing could set the US back in the AI race with China.
“I really thought [the order] could have been a blocker.”— Donald Trump, President
Key facts
- 01Trump canceled an executive order signing Thursday after top AI CEOs declined a 24-hour-notice Oval Office event.
- 02The order would have required government testing up to 90 days before frontier model releases; AI labs pushed for a 14-day window.
- 03OpenAI supported the order; Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg reportedly lobbied Trump to call it off.
- 04China issued new AI ethics rules in April and outlined comprehensive AI legislation in May.
- 05David Sacks, whose special government employee designation expired in March, joined the push to delay the signing.
The executive order was proposed after Anthropic flagged cybersecurity risks with its latest model, Mythos, prompting security-focused agencies within the Trump administration to recommend expanded voluntary testing. The goal was to identify security vulnerabilities in AI models and patch problems in government systems to protect banks, utilities, and other sensitive infrastructure from cyberattacks.
“I think it gets in the way of—you know, we're leading China, we're leading everybody, and I don't want to do anything that's going to get in the way of that lead.”— Donald Trump, President
The tech industry lobbied against the order, fearing that safety testing could delay model launches or require changes that set back development. One source of tension was the testing timeline—the government's 90-day window versus the labs' 14-day request.
Trump's AI policy approach has created internal friction within his administration. Discord exists between agencies favoring light-touch regulation, like the Commerce Department and the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and security-focused offices like the Office of the National Cyber Director, which argue that governance is overdue. Vice President JD Vance said Wednesday the administration was prioritizing protecting people's data and privacy after concerns about Mythos surfaced.
China's regulatory process is accelerating. Beijing issued a regulation in April requiring domestic AI firms to establish internal artificial intelligence ethics review committees. In May, the State Council outlined a legislative work plan for 2026 to improve AI governance and accelerate comprehensive legislation for AI development.
Trump agreed at a recent summit with China's president, Xi Jinping, to launch an intergovernmental dialogue on AI to mutually navigate emerging national security risks as AI technology advances, according to the Chinese Foreign Ministry.
It remains unclear whether Trump plans to reschedule the signing or what changes would be required to secure his approval. Lizzi C. Lee, a fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute's Center for China Analysis, noted that Trump appears to be navigating the same dilemma as China—how to guard against national security risks without slowing the development of frontier models.
Lee suggested the order's impact depends on how heavy the review process becomes. If Trump's safety testing focuses narrowly on national security, it probably will not slow leading US labs much. She argued that parallel to the AI race is a separate, potentially more important race to figure out who can govern powerful AI without choking off innovation.
The abrupt cancellation exposes the tension between Trump's desire to maintain US AI dominance and mounting pressure from security-focused officials to implement safeguards. The 90-day versus 14-day testing-window dispute is a proxy for a larger question: whether the US will regulate proactively or remain reactive until a Mythos-scale event forces a harder choice. China's faster regulatory cadence suggests the governance race may matter as much as the model race—and the US is currently losing both.
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