{"id":218171,"date":"2026-05-21T14:38:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T18:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/21\/trump-postpones-executive-order-focused-on-ai-security\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T15:00:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T19:00:11","slug":"trump-postpones-executive-order-focused-on-ai-security","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/21\/trump-postpones-executive-order-focused-on-ai-security\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump postpones executive order focused on AI security\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trump postpones executive order focused on AI security\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/cyberscoop.com\/trump-postpones-executive-order-focused-on-ai-security\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-05-21 14:38:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: cyberscoop.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Author: <\/a><\/p>\n

Using an unordered list, summarize the following article with between 4 and 8 key points. <\/p>\n

President Donald Trump said he would postpone the release of an executive order that would set up a 90-day testing and vetting regime for frontier AI models, hours before the White House was set to publicly announce the signing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office Thursday, Trump said he opted to delay the order \u201cbecause I didn\u2019t like certain aspects of it\u201d and expressed concerns that it could harm U.S. AI industry competition with countries like China.\u00a0<\/p>\n

According to multiple sources, a draft version of the order circulating in the last 24 hours would have set up a voluntary testing regime between the U.S. federal government and frontier AI companies that would allow the government to study new models for 90 days before they\u2019re publicly released. In addition to the government, the draft order would also facilitate access to the models for cybersecurity testers in critical infrastructure sectors, like finance and healthcare.<\/p>\n

The draft order empowered the National Security Agency to conduct classified evaluations of frontier AI models, while the Department of the Treasury would have set up a new information sharing agreement between AI companies and cybersecurity defenders in critical infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Other agencies, like the Office of the National Cyber Director, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the National Institute for Standards and Technology, would also be involved in defining which models are covered under the vetting regime.<\/p>\n

In some sense, the order would formalize an already cooperative relationship between AI companies and governments like the U.S. and UK, where tech-focused agencies and regulators have already been provided access to previous models ahead of their release for testing and evaluation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A former federal official who has seen the latest draft circulated before Thursday\u2019s announcement told CyberScoop that based on their conversations with the administration, the order was intended to facilitate more robust testing from government agencies compared to evaluations conducted for previous models. They said that is in part a reflection of the federal government\u2019s maturing understanding of AI technology over the past five years.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the past there has been containerized optionality for the intelligence community and others to take a look at things, but it was really a lot of hand holding [from AI companies] and self-explanation of what they expect this thing to do,\u201d said the official, granted anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations with the administration. \u201cAnd now the government is coming forward and saying now we feel we\u2019re prepared enough for you to just give us your tool\u2026and we\u2019ll go from there.\u201d<\/p>\n

But it also represents a stark pivot by the Trump administration, which came into office openly dismissive of AI safety policies and arguing that they would inhibit U.S. industry. Trump\u2019s latest comments in delaying the order echo those same attitudes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The former official said that while the Trump White House doesn\u2019t view its mission as telling AI companies \u201cdon\u2019t develop AI that can do X, which was perceived to be the previous administration\u2019s role,\u201d they also acknowledged the administration\u2019s early rhetoric on AI regulation has painted them into a corner.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the biggest challenge the administration has is that their tone was \u2018no institution of guardrails\u2019 and they don\u2019t have a better word for making sure that the capabilities of emergent frontier models don\u2019t disrupt security than to say \u2018let\u2019s test it and institute guardrails,\u2019\u201d the official said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

While debate about how best to regulate AI-related harms continues, most agree there are genuine national security concerns around the technology.<\/p>\n

Ram Shankar Siva Kumar, founder of Microsoft\u2019s AI red team, told CyberScoop that in 2019, his staff consisted of himself and a few other security and machine learning specialists. Now a much larger staff of technologists are supported by specialists in psychology, linguistics, bioweapons and other fields.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause of frontier harms, what we have done has really morphed,\u201d Siva Kumar said.<\/p>\n

The United States, along with Israel, Russia, Ukraine and others have already deployed AI in targeted military operations or integrated the technology into their larger command and control structure. AI is being used to supercharge drone warfare, global hacking campaigns, and sophisticated surveillance and targeting of military personnel and civilians, imbuing the engineering choices of frontier AI companies with life and death consequences.<\/p>\n

Some congressional members who previously opposed allowing AI to make autonomous kill decisions on the battlefield have been reconsidering their position.<\/p>\n

Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., who co-chaired the Congressional AI Caucus and was appointed to a bipartisan AI task force in 2024. said that while he thinks \u201cwe need to guard against dehumanizing\u201d those decisions, he also worries that adversarial countries will use the same technology against the United States.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like if we say that Americans have to have a human in the loop and the Chinese don\u2019t have to have a human in a loop, the non-human one will beat the human one every time,\u201d Beyer said at an AI conference in Washington D.C. earlier this month.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, experts have been increasingly concerned about the technology\u2019s impact on cybersecurity, as current models are remarkably good at finding software bugs and vulnerabilities, while newer models like Anthropic\u2019s Mythos and OpenAI\u2019s Daybreak are capable of chaining together multiple exploits to conduct more sophisticated attacks.<\/p>\n

While state-sponsored hackers are experimenting with the technology and using it to gain targeted efficiencies in their hacking operations, cybersecurity experts in the private sector and law enforcement agencies say the technology has mostly benefitted cybercriminals and scammers.<\/p>\n

\t\t\tWritten by Derek B. Johnson
\n\t\t\tDerek B. Johnson is a reporter at CyberScoop, where his beat includes cybersecurity, elections and the federal government. Prior to that, he has provided award-winning coverage of cybersecurity news across the public and private sectors for various publications since 2017. Derek has a bachelor\u2019s degree in print journalism from Hofstra University in New York and a master\u2019s degree in public policy from George Mason University in Virginia.\t\t<\/p>\n

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