US President Donald Trump had said that AI would be one of the areas he’d focus on during his second term, and he seems to have laid the groundwork by releasing an AI action plan in the sixth month of his Presidency.
The White House has released “America’s AI Action Plan,” a comprehensive strategy document from the Executive Office of the President’s Office of Science and Technology Policy. The plan outlines a national vision to “achieve and maintain unquestioned and unchallenged global technological dominance” in artificial intelligence.
The document, introduced with a foreword by Trump, frames the global AI race as a national security imperative. “Whoever has the largest AI ecosystem will set global AI standards and reap broad economic and military benefits,” the plan states, likening the current challenge to the 20th-century space race. Trump had previously called China’s DeepSeek model a “wake up call for America”.
The action plan is structured around three core pillars: accelerating AI innovation, building American AI infrastructure, and leading in international AI diplomacy and security. It emphasizes a private-sector-led approach, aiming to dismantle regulatory barriers and foster a supportive environment for American companies to thrive.
Pillar I: Accelerate AI Innovation
To Accelerate AI Innovation, the document talks about deregulation and removal of red tape. It aims to ensure that AI systems, particularly those procured by the government, are free from “ideological bias” and “social engineering agendas.” his includes revising the NIST AI Risk Management Framework to remove references to misinformation and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
The US government wans to encourage the development of open-source and open-weight AI models to foster innovation, benefit startups, and serve as a “geostrategic value.” It also speaks about investing in AI-enabled science and next-generation manufacturing, such as robotics and autonomous drones, to spark a “new industrial renaissance.”
Pillar II: Build American AI Infrastructure
“AI is the first digital service in modern life that challenges America to build vastly greater energy generation than we have today,” the document says, making infrastructure a cornerstone of its strategy. The plan calls for a massive build-out of data centers, semiconductor manufacturing facilities, and the energy grid required to power them, under the mantra, “Build, Baby, Build!”
This section addresses Streamlined Permitting, Energy Grid Modernization, Restoring Semiconductor Manufacturing. It also describes a national initiative to identify and train workers for high-priority occupations essential to the AI infrastructure buildout, such as electricians and advanced HVAC technicians, through apprenticeships and career and technical education
Pillar III: Lead in International AI Diplomacy and Security
The final pillar addresses the global nature of AI competition, aiming to establish American AI as the “gold standard for AI worldwide.” The strategy is to build a global alliance around American technology while actively countering the influence of adversaries. The proposal outlines a comprehensive strategy to bolster America’s global leadership in artificial intelligence by exporting the entire U.S. AI technology stack—including hardware, models, and standards—to allied nations. This effort aims to build an international AI alliance centered on democratic values, while countering authoritarian models of governance, especially those promoted by China in global institutions.
To safeguard national interests, the plan calls for reinforced export controls to deny adversaries, particularly China, access to advanced AI computing capabilities and semiconductor manufacturing tools. It proposes strict enforcement mechanisms, such as chip location verification and closing regulatory loopholes. Additionally, the U.S. would push allies to adopt parallel protections, using measures like the Foreign Direct Product Rule and secondary tariffs to ensure alignment. The strategy also prioritizes evaluating national security risks from frontier AI technologies and enhancing biosecurity measures, including mandatory AI-enabled pathogen screening for federally funded research institutions.
It seems to be comprehensive plans, and seeks to maintain US’s dominance in AI. The US is already the center of gravity for current AI developments, but China is fast catching up, especially in open-source models and video generation models. The US seems awake to the threat, and seems to have put a formal document in place to make sure that it maintains its lead in AI in the coming decades.