Artificial Intelligence – Trump’s deregulation and the oligarchization of politics

Overall, the AI Action Plan affirms the Trump administration’s view that AI is the defining social, economic and political weapon of our time, and can help to win everything from culture wars to geopolitical conflicts. The right AI will help beat China in the AI race. Government pressure on leading AI companies can force them to purge "woke" ideology from their models. The Plan contains almost no provisions which challenge the power of the tech giants. The radical shift destroys the policies that enabled the US to become the world leader in AI as the research and development was funded since the 1950s and in large part by federal government agencies like the Defense Department, the National Science Foundation, NASA, and the National Institutes of Health. This includes the first successful AI program in 1956, the first chatbot in 1961, and the first expert systems for doctors in the 1970s, along with breakthroughs in machine learning, neural networks, backpropagation, computer vision, and natural-language processing.

The new AI Action Plan’s approach to state regulation departs from traditional cooperative federalism and raises serious constitutional concerns as it undermines the separation of powers by imposing funding conditions that Congress had never before authorized. In addition, it stretches administrative law limits by inviting federal agencies, particularly the Federal Communications Commission, to preempt state AI regulations without a clear statutory basis. Finally, the Plan threatens core principles of federalism by attaching funding restrictions that are ambiguous in scope, potentially unrelated to the federal programs they affect, and coercive in their impact on states’ ability to legislate protection of their residents.

It is no surprise that a few days after the presentation of the AI Action Plan, Chinese premier Li Qiang proposed establishing an organization to foster global cooperation on AI, calling on countries to coordinate on the development and security of the fast-evolving technology. Speaking at the annual World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai, Li called AI a new engine for growth, adding that governance is fragmented and emphasizing the need for more coordination between countries to form a globally recognized framework for AI. Li warned that AI development must be weighed against the security risks, saying global consensus was urgently needed.

European critics, including many in the data protection community, urge a pivot toward a more balanced model that does not compromise privacy, transparency or human rights. The contrast with the EU’s AI Act is clear. While the Trump administration favors speed, deregulation, and market dominance, the EU has adopted a risk-based framework. The EU AI Act sets out clear rules based on the level of risk posed to individuals and society, banning certain uses outright and enforcing strict supervision for high-risk applications as well as transparency for limited-risk systems. With many already viewing the EU AI Act as the "gold standard" for responsible AI governance, the Trump administration’s plan is designed to directly compete with it.

AI has been catapulted to the forefront of political agendas of all levels of government. Across every major market and facet of society, policymakers face difficult tradeoffs between individual rights and collective welfare, innovation and regulation, economic growth and social equity. The political developments in the United States show that presidential systems harbor the danger of becoming authoritarian by disproportional personalization of power. This leads to the domination of the overall political system by one person supported by small elite groups, organizations and enterprises.