Trump Cancels AI Executive Order Hours Before Signing, Citing Competition Fears

President Donald Trump was scheduled to sign a major executive order on artificial intelligence at a White House ceremony Thursday afternoon. Hours before the event, he canceled it. The reason, in his own words: "We're leading China, we're leading everybody, and I don't want to do anything that's going to get in the way of that lead," Trump told reporters, BNN Bloomberg / The Associated Press reported.

The about‑face, the The New York Times was first to report the order's details and detailed by,¹ exposed deep fractures within the administration over how — and whether — to regulate the most powerful AI systems.

The canceled order would have established a government‑led framework for pre‑release vetting of the most advanced AI models, creating a process for assessing national security risks before systems went public. It was characterized as a voluntary partnership with U.S. tech companies including Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google, BNN Bloomberg reported, citing a person familiar with the deliberations.

The order would have marked a significant shift for an administration that had previously pushed back against state‑level AI regulations, arguing they stifle growth. A federal screening mandate would have been the most significant federal AI oversight measure to date.

The push for pre‑release vetting was triggered by growing alarm about Anthropic's Claude Mythos model. In April, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and outgoing Fed Chair Jerome Powell convened an emergency meeting with Wall Street CEOs to warn about the model's ability to find software vulnerabilities.

"This new Anthropic model is very powerful. Some banks are doing a better job in cybersecurity than others, and we want to have the ability to convene them and talk about what is best practices and where they should be heading," Bessent said at CNBC's "Invest in America Forum," BNN Bloomberg reported.

The meeting spurred some Trump allies to propose giving trusted cybersecurity experts early access to powerful AI tools — but the broader regulatory conversation quickly expanded beyond banking.

The whiplash between announcing and canceling the order reflects competing factions within the Trump administration. Serena Booth, a computer science professor at Brown University and former AI policy fellow, described what she called "public fighting" in comments BNN Bloomberg reported: "We do see this kind of public fighting. 'We will release an executive order. No, we won't. We're going to sign it this afternoon. Oh, the signing is cancelled.' I think this whiplash is because we're seeing these fractures."

Vice President JD Vance, while declining to discuss the order's specifics, emphasized the administration's dual focus. "The president wants us to be pro‑innovation. He wants us to win the AI race against all other countries in the world. We also want to make sure that we're protecting people," Vance said, BNN Bloomberg reported.

Adding to the confusion: earlier in May, the Commerce Department announced it had signed agreements with Google, Microsoft, and Elon Musk's xAI to evaluate their most powerful models before public release — building on Biden‑era agreements with Anthropic and OpenAI. But the announcement was later removed from the Commerce Department website, BNN Bloomberg reported, with no explanation.

The disappearing agreements suggest that even the pre‑existing voluntary framework is on shaky ground — another signal that the Trump administration hasn't settled on a coherent AI safety approach.

The canceled order doesn't mean regulation is dead — it means it's unpredictable. The administration is caught between Wall Street banks terrified of AI‑powered cyberattacks and a White House that sees regulation as a threat to American dominance.

For AI builders, the practical impact is mixed. No pre‑release vetting means faster iteration and fewer compliance hurdles in the short term. But the regulatory whiplash creates uncertainty: companies building on top of frontier models don't know what rules might appear — or disappear — between now and their next release. The one clear takeaway is that Claude Mythos has become a political lightning rod, and any developer building on Anthropic's stack should factor regulatory risk into their planning.