The White House has put artificial intelligence at the center of its technology agenda with a new federal blueprint aimed at accelerating AI development in the United States. The plan treats AI as a strategic contest, with the administration arguing that the country must move faster to preserve economic, military, and technological leadership.
The document, titled “Winning the Race: America’s AI Action Plan,” lays out a 25-page strategy focused on deregulation, infrastructure expansion, and international diplomacy. It also drew immediate criticism from advocates and organizations that say the approach gives too much power to large technology companies while doing too little for workers, communities, safety, and the environment.
A federal AI strategy built around speed
The plan was crafted by Assistant to the President for Science and Technology Michael Kratsios and Special Advisor for AI and Crypto David Sacks. It frames AI development as a race the US must win, especially against China.
At the heart of the document is the administration’s goal to “maintain unquestioned and unchallenged global technological dominance” in AI. The plan describes AI as “an industrial revolution, an information revolution, and a renaissance—all at once,” making clear that the White House sees the technology as a broad economic and geopolitical force rather than a narrow software issue.
The strategy is organized around three pillars: innovation, infrastructure, and international diplomacy. Across those areas, the recommendations aim to speed AI adoption, support American AI technology abroad, and limit access for countries the Trump administration views as adversaries.
The document also compares today’s AI competition to the space race of the 1960s. It argues that “Whoever has the largest AI ecosystem will set global AI standards and reap broad economic and military benefits.” That framing helps explain why the plan places so much emphasis on reducing barriers for private-sector AI development.
Deregulation is the central lever
A major part of Trump’s AI Action Plan is a shift away from Biden-era AI oversight. The source article notes that President Trump rescinded Executive Order 14110, which addressed AI model safety measures, on his first day in office during his second term.
The new plan directs the Office of Management and Budget to work with federal agencies on identifying and changing regulations that “unnecessarily hinder AI development or deployment.” It also instructs the Federal Trade Commission to review investigations begun under the previous administration to make sure they do not “advance theories of liability that unduly burden AI innovation.”
That regulatory posture is not limited to enforcement. On the technology side, the plan directs Commerce to revise NIST’s AI Risk Management Framework to “eliminate references to misinformation, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and climate change.” Federal procurement would also favor AI developers whose systems are “objective and free from top-down ideological bias.”
The plan strongly supports open source AI models. It also calls for exporting American AI technology to allies while blocking administration-labeled adversaries like China from accessing it.
Data centers, power, and the buildout of AI infrastructure
The White House plan treats infrastructure as a core requirement for AI leadership. It says “AI is the first digital service in modern life that challenges America to build vastly greater energy generation than we have today.”
To meet that demand, the document proposes several changes tied to data centers and energy systems. These include streamlining environmental permitting for data centers through new National Environmental Policy Act exemptions, making federal lands available for construction, and modernizing the power grid.
The plan describes this approach as “Build, Baby, Build!” and says it rejects “radical climate dogma and bureaucratic red tape.” It also promises to restore semiconductor manufacturing through the CHIPS Program Office, while removing what it calls “extraneous policy requirements.”
Security is another part of the infrastructure agenda. The document includes proposals for high-security military data centers and warns that advanced AI systems “may pose novel national security risks” in cyberattacks and weapons development.
Critics say the plan favors Big Tech
The administration’s AI strategy was met with sharp opposition. J.B. Branch, Big Tech accountability advocate for Public Citizen, criticized Trump in a statement provided to Ars as giving “sweetheart deals” to technology companies. Branch said those deals would cause “electricity bills to rise to subsidize discounted power for massive AI data centers.”
A broader response had already formed before the White House released its plan. More than 90 organizations launched a competing “People’s AI Action Plan” on Tuesday, calling the administration’s approach “a massive handout to the tech industry.” The coalition includes labor unions, environmental justice groups, and consumer protection nonprofits.
Sarah Myers West and Amba Kak, co-executive directors of the AI Now Institute, which helped organize the statement, said: “The White House AI Action Plan is written by Big Tech interests invested in advancing AI that’s used on us, not by us.”
The coalition’s statement made a broader argument about who should shape AI policy: “We can’t let Big Tech and Big Oil lobbyists write the rules for AI and our economy at the expense of our freedom and equality, workers and families’ well-being, even the air we breathe and the water we drink—all of which are affected by the unrestrained and unaccountable roll-out of AI.”
The concerns identified by the coalition include the environmental impact of data centers, potential job displacement, and the lack of meaningful safety standards. West told The Washington Post that “The rollout of the technology is acting in ways that push down wages, that devalue our work, that are harming our environment and affecting community health.”
Health care workers also raised concerns. Cathy Kennedy, RN, National Nurses United president, said in the coalition’s announcement: “Nurses are opposed to our patients being used as guinea pigs for unregulated and untested AI technology.” She added: “We support AI when it is used to improve our ability to care for our patients, not when it is used by industry to cut labor costs and increase profits at the expense of patients.”
The White House defends its approach
The White House rejected the criticism. OSTP spokesperson Victoria LaCivita told The Washington Post: “This spirit of fear is exactly how China made significant progress under the Biden administration.”
LaCivita also defended the plan as a matter of national priorities: “Artificial intelligence is at the center of our national security and economic interests. Putting America First means ensuring that emerging technologies and innovation can flourish here, at home—not with our foreign adversaries.”
The debate around Trump’s AI Action Plan now centers on a basic policy choice: whether faster AI deployment requires fewer constraints, or whether the speed of deployment makes stronger safeguards more important. The White House is choosing acceleration, infrastructure, and global competition as its guideposts. Its critics are answering that the costs of AI development should not be shifted onto workers, patients, communities, or the public.