Industry groups say the new White House artificial intelligence action plan puts wind in their sails in the global race for AI dominance after a few years of regulatory uncertainty, while civil society groups cite a few positives in the plan while lamenting missed opportunities and moves they say will undermine safe deployment.
“President Trump’s AI Action Plan presents a blueprint to usher in a new era of U.S. AI dominance,” Information Technology Industry Council president and CEO Jason Oxman said in a statement.
“The administration’s vision takes essential steps to ensure the U.S. can win the global AI race by prioritizing U.S. energy production and infrastructure development to power AI’s growth, promoting U.S. AI leadership internationally by supporting the export of the full stack of American AI technologies to partners and allies, and accelerating adoption of AI across the public and private sectors,” Oxman said.
The White House action plan, released July 23, “identifies over 90 Federal policy actions across three pillars -- Accelerating Innovation, Building American AI Infrastructure, and Leading in International Diplomacy and Security -- that the Trump Administration will take in the coming weeks and months,” according to a White House release.
President Trump is expected to sign three AI executive orders later the same day focused on AI infrastructure, export controls and countering “woke” AI, according to sources familiar with the documents.
Tech groups encouraged
Business Software Alliance CEO Victoria Espinel said, “BSA appreciates the Action Plan’s commitment to creating the essential conditions for widespread AI adoption. The Action Plan advances key BSA recommendations for AI talent, including developing an AI skills curriculum, improving access to training resources, and leveraging real-time workforce data. It emphasizes the development of critical infrastructure and reliable energy resources necessary to scale AI deployment.”
She said, “The Action Plan also reinforces the roles of the Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI) and NIST in the development of standards and evaluation tools, a foundation for both domestic AI governance and in promoting international collaboration on AI. Additionally, the Action Plan streamlines government procurement processes, enabling public-sector agencies to more effectively access and adopt cutting-edge commercial AI solutions.”
BSA’s Espinel said, “Policymakers who are thinking about AI competitiveness must focus on AI adoption; countries that effectively adopt AI are best positioned to lead economically and benefit across sectors. BSA looks forward to continued collaboration with the Trump administration and Congress on constructive steps to further AI adoption."
ITI
ITI’s Oxman added in his statement, “As agencies begin implementing the President’s plan, we encourage policymakers to invest in modernizing government technology and to leverage industry’s deep expertise to maintain America’s AI leadership.”
Oxman said, “The AI Action Plan addresses several industry priorities including: addressing permitting challenges that block or delay construction of new data center and power generation projects, promoting AI adoption across the federal government and beyond, highlighting the importance of U.S. leadership in international standard setting bodies, and empowering Americans to fully participate in the AI integrated workforce of tomorrow.”
SIIA
Paul Lekas, senior vice president for global public policy at the Software & Information Industry Association, said, “This plan provides the roadmap to cement the United States as the global leader in AI by supporting innovation and security, strengthening U.S. competitiveness, and ensuring the benefits of AI are broadly shared.”
Lekas said, “We're especially encouraged by the plan's focus on workforce development and AI literacy as core elements of AI infrastructure. These are key components for building trust and ensuring all communities can participate in and benefit from AI's potential. We call on the Administration to take action to ensure that schools and institutions receive the resources they need to realize this vision.”
CCIA
Computer & Communications Industry Association senior counsel for innovation policy Josh Landau said, “When it comes to AI technology that will become an ordinary part of the process for innovation and creation, it is crucial that U.S. companies are able to compete – not just to fulfill economic goals, but to safeguard interests like privacy, national security, and promote democratic values.”
“Importantly,” CCIA said, “the AI Action Plan includes elements that instruct the government to remove barriers to AI infrastructure in the U.S. and the export of American AI, notes that open-source models have an important role to play, and tasks agencies with creating frameworks for improved AI security.”
From telecom
USTelecom president and CEO Jonathan Spalter highlighted the need for broadband buildouts as a key component of AI infrastructure.
Spalter said, “The Trump Administration’s AI action plan is a turbo boost for American innovation. From clearing regulatory roadblocks to reforming outdated permitting to doubling down on security, this is the kind of bold leadership we need to win the AI race. But even the best-engineered AI needs a track built for speed -- and that’s where fiber comes in. Fiber broadband is the fast lane for America’s AI future: powerful, secure, scalable, and built to go the distance, whether you’re in a big city or a heartland town.”
He said, “Broadband providers are tuned up, fully fueled, and ready to work with the Administration to help America stay a lap ahead in the competition for AI leadership.”
From the manufacturers
National Association of Manufacturers president and CEO Jay Timmons said, “We’ve been calling for a pro-AI policy environment -- one that supports innovation and responsible integration of AI into real-world operations. That means not rushing to impose burdensome laws or regulations when workable rules already exist.”
“It means adopting requirements that are tailored to specific use cases of AI. It also means light-touch regulations that limit compliance costs so small and medium-sized manufacturers aren’t locked out of this technology,” Timmons said. “The White House plan answers that call.”
ARI
Americans for Responsible Innovation, a public-interest tech group, said the plan includes important provisions in areas such as biosecurity, but could undermine public trust by targeting state regulation of AI.
“Ultimately, this action plan is about increasing oversight of AI systems while maintaining a hands-off approach to hard and fast regulations,” said ARI president Brad Carson. “On biosecurity, AI interpretability, evaluations, and incident response, this plan creates an opportunity for us to better understand what’s happening inside the black box of AI and the big risks frontier models create for the public.”
“At the same time,” Carson said, “the plan’s targeting of state-passed AI safeguards is cause for concern. For America to lead on AI, we have to build public trust in these systems, and safeguards are essential to that public confidence.”
An ARI statement added, “The Action Plan includes a number of proposals shared by ARI with the Administration, including strengthening export controls, investing in biosecurity, protecting the public from synthetic media, accelerating workforce adaptation, creating federal capacity for AI incident response, research on AI interpretability and control, and evaluating models for national security risks.”
Civil society groups see risks, ‘some positive elements’
Civil society groups raised concerns over language targeting state AI regulations, liability protections and the environmental impacts of loosening regulatory controls around building AI data centers and related infrastructure, among other issues.
CDT
The Center for Democracy and Technology’s Samir Jain said in a statement, “Today’s AI Action Plan is a missed opportunity. Although promoting innovation is important, the Plan whiffs by failing to include measures to help ensure that AI development and deployment happens responsibly and addresses potential harms. Instead, the Plan includes actively detrimental provisions.”
“For example,” CDT’s Jain said, “the Administration should not hinder state officials in their efforts to respond to the real and documented harms created by AI. The government should not be acting as a Ministry of AI Truth or insisting that AI models hew to its preferred interpretation of reality. There is no reason to weaken the AI Risk Management Framework by eliminating references to some of the real risks that AI poses.”
“To be sure,” Jain said, “the Plan has some positive elements, including promotion of open-source and open-weight systems, support for building an AI evaluations ecosystem, and an increased focus on the security of AI systems.”
“But ultimately, the Plan is highly unbalanced, focusing too much on promoting the technology while largely failing to address the ways in which it could potentially harm people,” CDT’s Jain said.
Consumer Reports, ACLU
“AI holds tremendous promise, but also serious risks for consumers. In the absence of Congressional action, states must be permitted to move forward with rules that protect consumers. Today’s action leaves states in a lurch; it’s unclear which state laws will be considered “burdensome” and which federal funds are on the line” said Grace Gedye, Consumer Reports policy analyst for AI issues.
“Earlier this month, Big Tech lobbyists tried to insert a 10-year moratorium on state AI laws into the budget bill but a bipartisan group of senators voted overwhelmingly to reject it. At a time of deep political division, there is rare and welcome consensus that states should be allowed to continue advancing AI rules that protect consumers,” Gedye said.
On another topic, Consumer Reports said, “The action plan also calls for a review of Federal Trade Commission investigations, orders, consent decrees, and injunctions to ensure they do not ‘burden AI innovation.’ This language could potentially be interpreted to give free rein to AI developers to create harmful products without any regard for the consequences.”
The group said, “While many AI products offer real benefits to consumers, many pose real threats as well -- such as deepfake intimate image generators, therapy chatbots, and voice cloning services.”
The American Civil Liberties Union said the plan “thwarts the decision of Congress to not preempt state laws and is a dangerous step backward for protecting civil rights and civil liberties against artificial intelligence use.”