In late July the White House released its action plan on artificial intelligence, called “Winning the Race.” At the same time, President Donald Trump signed three executive orders focusing on three core areas: federal procurement, infrastructure development and technology exports. These measures aim to reshape and strengthen the leadership of the United States globally in the AI field.Like the Joe Biden administration before it, the Trump administration recognizes that artificial intelligence is a key technology for national security and economic competitiveness, and its policy objectives are directed toward maintaining America's technological leadership and winning the global competition. However, when it comes to the specific strategies for how to win, Trump's AI policy demonstrates distinct characteristics that set it apart.
Deregulating the AI sector
The Trump administration argues that regulatory costs and procedural delays have significantly constrained the ability of the United States to compete in key technological domains at the global level. Its answer is substantial deregulation and the expedited deployment of AI across various fields and government agencies as a means to foster an environment conducive to AI-driven innovation.In January, during the first week of Trump's second term, he reissued Executive Order 14179 — which seeks to eliminate barriers to U.S. leadership in AI. This order calls for the revision or outright repeal of regulations that hinder AI innovation and development, with particular emphasis on removing regulatory constraints introduced under the Biden administration, such as diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, requirements and environmental regulations imposed on data center development.The newly released action plan adopts an even more assertive and coercive approach. It stipulates that the allocation of federal funds will be directly linked to the degree of regulatory leniency at the state level, effectively penalizing states with complex or restrictive AI-related regulations by restricting the flow of federal funds to those jurisdictions.Taken together, the measures signal that the United States is likely to move toward a domestic environment for AI development that is more open, market-driven and minimally regulated. This approach reflects a fundamental ideological shift toward “permissionless innovation,” wherein technological progress is prioritized over precautionary oversight, and regulatory intervention is minimized to accelerate national competitiveness in the global AI race.
Prioritizing data centers
The Trump administration recognizes that without robust energy resources and physical infrastructure, U.S. ambitions in artificial intelligence would remain largely aspirational. Consequently, the administration has pursued an aggressive strategy of simplifying environmental rules and approval procedures that are perceived as obstacles to development, while simultaneously introducing financial incentives and land-use policies to accelerate the construction of data centers at what it calls “wartime speed.”On Jan. 21 this year, the second day of Trump's second term, the administration announced the launch of its Stargate program, a large-scale national initiative for AI infrastructure. This program immediately secured $500 billion in investment commitments from major private-sector actors, including OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle. Under Trump's vigorous promotion, a surge of international capital and private enterprises entered the AI infrastructure sector, underscoring the administration's strategy of combining state-led industrial policy with private and global investment participation.Several high-profile investment pledges illustrate this trend: Meta announced a $65 billion investment in 2025 to build a massive new data center complex. Microsoft committed $40 billion to create training hubs for AI models and deployment centers across the United States. DAMAC Properties, a Dubai-based real estate conglomerate, pledged to invest in data centers across eight key U.S. states, including Texas and Ohio, to bolster regional innovation and job creation.
All these initiatives aim for a comprehensive upgrade of America's AI infrastructure to form a high-capacity national computation network that would underpin and consolidate the country's leadership position in global AI development.Trump has framed energy production and data centers as the “lifeblood” of AI advancement. This philosophy is clearly articulated in the action plan, which pushes the theme of “Build, baby, build!” The plan explicitly calls for support of both public and private sector development of essential infrastructure for AI innovation and deployment, including data centers, semiconductor manufacturing facilities and energy systems.Particular attention is given to resolving long-standing bottlenecks in permitting processes, grid capacity and power supplies that could hinder growth. In terms of energy infrastructure, a critical pillar of the strategy, Trump signed an executive order in May to initiate a significant expansion of U.S. nuclear energy production, with the ambitious target of quadrupling nuclear output over the next 25 years.
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Domestic semiconductors
Chip manufacturing on U.S. soil is another key priority of the Trump agenda. In August, Trump announced a sweeping policy imposing a 100 percent punitive tariff on all imported chips and semiconductor products, a move designed to force global supply chains to reorient toward domestic U.S. production. Even before this announcement, U.S. technology giants, under mounting government pressure, had already begun redirecting significant investments back into the United States. Apple pledged $100 billion to relocate key iPhone production lines to Texas. NVIDIA, in April, announced plans to invest $500 billion over four years to build AI infrastructure domestically. GlobalFoundries, in June, committed $16 billion to expand its semiconductor fabrication facilities in New York and Vermont. Also in Junee, Texas Instruments revealed a $60 billion investment across seven U.S. semiconductor factories.These efforts reflect a broader strategic initiative to reshore manufacturing capacity, positioning semiconductors and chips as the cornerstone of Trump's “manufacturing revival” strategy. By combining computational infrastructure, energy development and industrial policy, the administration seeks to fortify the domestic foundation for AI leadership while simultaneously reshaping global technology supply chains to favor U.S. strategic interests.
Industrial development
The Trump administration recognizes that the main bottleneck preventing the U.S. from fully realizing the potential of artificial intelligence is its limited and slow application, especially in key industries and large, established organizations. Therefore, the administration plans to promote a dynamic “try first” culture for AI across American industry. The action plan encourages the use of AI in healthcare, energy, agriculture, defense and science, while establishing a national network of AI regulatory sandboxes and AI Centers of Excellence (CoEs). It also seeks to accelerate the development and implementation of national standards for AI systems and to measure the extent to which AI improves productivity in specific tasks and domains.
In terms of military applications, Trump previously emphasized the importance of AI for national security and launched extensive investments in AI militarization during his first term. In this plan, he again called for expanding AI adoption within the armed forces to maintain U.S. global military superiority.The action plan would establish an AI and autonomous systems virtual proving ground. It contemplates collaboration between the Department of Defense and private-sector cloud service providers to ensure access to resources and technologies during major conflicts. It also recommends developing U.S. military colleges into hubs of AI research, development, talent building, and the teaching of core AI skills and literacy to future generations. Further, it urges the DOD, in collaboration with NIST and ODNI, to continue to refine the military's AI and generative AI frameworks, its roadmaps and its toolkits to ensure that AI development aligns with U.S. national security objectives.
Tech right influence
It is noteworthy that the Trump administration's AI policy has been heavily influenced by the tech right. During Trump's second term, several prominent technology leaders were brought into key government positions. For example, Michael Kratsios, CEO of Scale AI, was appointed as director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; Darío Gil, research director at IBM, became deputy secretary of energy for science and innovation; and David O. Sacks, an entrepreneur and venture capitalist, was named White House lead on AI and cryptocurrency.Sacks played a central role in drafting both the Trump administration's AI executive orders and the action plan and has been dubbed “AI czar.”Peter Thiel, founder of Palantir, which provides AI-driven data analytics to the U.S. Department of Defense and intelligence agencies, has also been a key advocate for AI militarization and technology exports. In addition, figures such as Elon Musk and Sriram Krishnan served Trump as informal advisers, exerting practical influence on the administration's AI policy agenda.All this demonstrates how, under Trump's leadership, entrepreneurs and tech leaders have assumed formal or informal government roles, accelerating technological innovation while promoting deeper integration of national policy and industry interests.
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The tech right is a political and cultural movement of conservative entrepreneurs and venture capitalists in Silicon Valley that promotes market primacy, deregulation and libertarian social views. Its adherents often oppose what they call “woke culture” and have increasingly backed Republican candidates — a shift from the tech industry's historically left-leaning political tendencies. The core of the action plan — accelerating AI innovation by removing regulatory roadblocks and ideological biases (namely diversity, equity and inclusion constraints) — aligns closely with long-standing tech-right ideals, such as “permissionless innovation,” anti-woke AI and pro-capital innovation culture. It is therefore fair to say that Trump's AI policy reflects core ideological principles of the tech-right.
