President Donald Trump appeared to commit to issuing a sweeping executive order concerning artificial intelligence in a vague Truth Social post, as reported by Bloomberg.
What's happening?
"I will be doing a ONE RULE Executive Order this week. You can't expect a company to get 50 Approvals every time they want to do something. THAT WILL NEVER WORK!" Trump wrote in a brief Truth Social post on Dec. 8.
In the post, Trump asserted that the United States was "beating ALL COUNTRIES" in the "race" to develop AI, adding that if all 50 states — "many of them bad actors" — had the ability to regulate AI, this purported dominance wouldn't "last long."
As technology news outlet TechCrunch reported, the statement followed a leaked draft of an executive order in November, titled "Eliminating State Law Obstruction Of National AI Policy."
In the leaked document, the administration maintained that more than 1,000 state legislatures had introduced various measures to regulate AI companies.
"California, for example, recently enacted a complex and burdensome disclosure and reporting law premised on the purely speculative suspicion that AI might 'pose significant catastrophic risk,'" the draft read in part.
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Based on the excerpted portion, the draft referenced California's SB 35, adopted in September. That legislation was analyzed by the nonpartisan Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP).
SB 35 "introduces protections for whistleblowers inside AI labs, mandatory reporting of certain safety incidents, and requirements that large developers publish so-called frontier AI frameworks to explain how they plan to mitigate catastrophic risks," the CEIP wrote.
On Dec. 8, White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett appeared on CNBC and said that regulating AI was a "game" the administration "isn't going to allow people to play."
"This executive order that he's promised to come out is going to make it clear that there's one set of rules for American companies in the U.S.," Hassett stated.
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Financial assistance for job training 💰 Why is this concerning?
While AI is a technology in its infancy, it's perhaps more accurate to contrast it with an unruly toddler in its terrible twos.
Throughout 2025, numerous issues related to AI's advancement were prominent. User safety came to the fore amid reports of "AI psychosis," which likely contributed to California's law.
The rise of AI has been tied to a volatile and difficult job market, and "Godfather of AI" Geoffrey Hinton repeatedly warned that the technology could lead to mass poverty without oversight.
Realistic AI content has duped users during major news events, and deepfakes are being used to impersonate people.
Moreover, as AI data centers continued sprouting up everywhere, American electricity bills increased dramatically, and the facilities themselves cratered locals' quality of life.
Data centers consume massive quantities of water as well as energy, but firms won't disclose specifics about their clear impact on public resources and the environment.
What's being done about it?
Ultimately, as the Harvard Kennedy School explained, executive orders "do not have the same force of law" as laws passed by Congress, and the order in question has not yet been issued.
In the meantime, constituents can contact their elected representatives to express support for AI oversight.
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