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President Trump’s new executive order on artificial intelligence reflects an old American instinct: not to stifle the next big technology before it has a chance to develop. We’ve been here before. In the 1990s, Washington – under President Bill Clinton – largely resisted heavy state or local regulation in the early days of the Internet. The move helped America dominate the digital age while the rest of the world caught up.
Trump is clearly taking a cue from this playbook.
His order opposes a growing maze of state-level AI rules that threaten to slow innovation just as the global AI race heats up. This is important because it is not a friendly competition. Communist China is working to dominate artificial intelligence, investing state money in AI systems directly linked to surveillance, censorship and military power. Beijing doesn’t have 50 states fighting over rules. He has a plan – and he implements it.
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On this point, Trump is right: America cannot afford to regulate itself in the background.
But speed alone will not save us.
As I warn in my book 2025″AI for the future of humanity“Artificial intelligence is not just the Internet. AI doesn’t just connect people, it evaluates them. It decides who gets a loan, who gets hired, who gets reported, who gets silenced, and, increasingly, who gets targeted on the battlefield. It increases power faster than any technology in history, and when it goes wrong, it goes wrong at machine speed.
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We already know how this story can end. The Internet grew rapidly – and only later did Americans realize the cost: loss of privacy, online manipulation, monopolies, digital surveillance and relentless misinformation. Washington waited too long to act, and now we are forced to try to install guardrails on systems already integrated into daily life.
AI reduces this danger in years, not decades.
Trump’s executive order rightly highlights the danger of a patchwork of state-by-state regulations. But there is another side of the coin that Americans should be just as worried about. An executive order can block states, but it does not automatically protect citizens. If state authority is paralyzed and Congress does not act, we will not get “smart regulation.” We get a regulatory void.
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And in this void, ordinary Americans are losing.
Children are exposed to predatory AI systems. Workers are moved without warning or retraining. Deepfakes are flooding elections and financial scams are exploding. Algorithms quietly make life-changing decisions, and no one can explain – or question – how they were made.
China understands exactly what it is doing. AI is already merged there with state surveillance, social credit scoring, and military planning. US intelligence officials have warned that the race for AI is existential. If America loses, we don’t just lose tech jobs: we also lose our strategic freedom.
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But winning does not mean copying the Chinese model or abandoning AI without rules.
The real challenge is to prove that a free society can direct AI without abandoning human judgment, freedom and dignity to machines. This requires national leadership – not 50 state regulations, but also blind trust in technology.
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Trump is right to demand speed and unity. Now, Washington must provide content: clear federal safeguards that protect innovation while defending citizens.
If we repeat the mistakes of the Internet age – act fast and think later – we could win the race while losing the country we are trying to defend.
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