White House Unveils AI Action Plan to Secure Global Dominance

The White House unveiled “America’s AI Action Plan” on Wednesday, a strategy to maintain U.S. global dominance in artificial intelligence. The document emphasizes that winning the AI race is a national security and economic imperative.

“Today, a new frontier of scientific discovery lies before us, defined by transformative technologies such as artificial intelligence,” President Donald Trump wrote in the document. “Breakthroughs in these fields have the potential to reshape the global balance of power, spark entirely new industries, and revolutionize the way we live and work.”

Released by the Executive Office of the President, Office of Science and Technology Policy, the roadmap outlines plans to dismantle regulatory barriers, bolster domestic capabilities and project American AI leadership worldwide.  The plan builds off the administration’s January executive order reorienting federal AI policy toward private research and development and supporting  AI development free from “ideological bias or engineered social agendas.” The document also outlines the White House commitment to a “worker-first AI agenda,” ensuring that American workers benefit from the opportunities created by AI and other emerging technology.

The plan, authored by Assistant to the President for Science and Technology Special Advisor for AI and Crypto David Sacks and Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs Marco Rubio — features three pillars for AI policy: Accelerate AI Innovation, Build American AI Infrastructure and Lead in International AI Diplomacy and Security.

“An industrial revolution, an information revolution, and a renaissance—all at once. This is the potential that AI presents. The opportunity that stands before us is both inspiring and humbling. And it is ours to seize, or to lose,” the plan reads.

Pillar I: Accelerate AI Innovation

The first pillar focuses on fostering a vibrant private-sector-led innovation ecosystem. The plan calls for the removal of “red tape and onerous regulation,” citing Trump’s earlier rescissions of previous AI-related executive orders.

“We have to lead the world in creating a regulatory environment that allows our artificial intelligence companies to grow and succeed,” Kratsios told Congress during his February confirmation hearings. “ We have to create an environment where our workforce can actually thrive and take advantage of new technology and the last pillars around international engagement of how we can work with like-minded partners to ensure that American AI becomes a default AI of the world versus some of our adversaries.”

The plan recommends new requests for information to identify hindering regulations, working with federal agencies to revise or repeal burdensome rules, and evaluating state AI regulations that may interfere with other objectives in the plan.

This first pillar echoes previous White House statements that frontier AI will need to be free of bias and protect American values like free expression. The plan also promotes open-source and open-weight AI models, aiming to create a supportive environment for these technologies by improving financial markets for computing power and increasing research community access to private sector resources.

The plan aims to accelerate AI adoption across American industrial sectors — including health care, energy and agriculture — by establishing regulatory sandboxes and Centers of Excellence so that “researchers, startups, and established enterprises can rapidly deploy and test AI tools while committing to open sharing of data and results.” It calls for access to programs like the National Science Foundation’s National AI Research Resource and other government programs to provide “large-scale computing power for startups and academics by improving the financial market for compute.”

The White House strategy plans to empower American workers through AI skill development, continuous evaluation of AI’s labor market impact, education programs and rapid retraining programs. NSF Chief of Staff Brian Stone, performing the duties of the NSF Director, said that his office is working with the White House to support the strategy.

“The White House’s AI Action Plan sends a clear message: the United States is all-in on winning the future of artificial intelligence. This road map removes barriers to American innovation and reaffirms our commitment to seizing the opportunities of AI to advance economic competitiveness and national security,” Stone said Wednesday in a statement.  “At the U.S. National Science Foundation, we’re proud to have a critical role in realizing this future.”

Pillar II: Build American AI Infrastructure

The second pillar emphasizes building robust AI infrastructure to meet AI’s high energy demands. The plan calls for establishing new categorical exclusions under the National Environmental Policy Act for data centers and expediting environmental permitting. The plan also suggests making “federal lands available for data center construction and the construction of power generation infrastructure for those data centers by directing agencies with significant land portfolios to identify sites suited to large-scale development.”

The document calls for upgrading the American electricity grid to become capable of supporting the pace of AI innovation, through stabilizing the current grid, optimizing existing resources and prioritizing the interconnection of reliable, dispatchable power sources.

“The United States must develop a comprehensive strategy to enhance and expand the power grid designed not just to weather these challenges, but to ensure the grid’s continued strength and capacity for future growth,” the strategy reads.

The plan also seeks to restore American semiconductor manufacturing, ensuring a strong return on investment for taxpayers and integrating advanced AI tools into the manufacturing process.

The White House also calls for building high-security data centers for military and intelligence community use, including facilities that “must be resistant to attacks by the most determined and capable nation-state actors.” Kratsios outlined the need for national security AI development earlier this year to lead the world in AI development for warfare.

“Take, for example, large language models and actually making the step to apply those to the critical national security missions that we have at the DOD and in the IC,” Kratsios told Congress during his confirmation hearings. “It would be a shame if we’re able to lead in these technologies, but we’re not actually feeling them in support of the warfighter.”

Pillar III: Lead in International AI Diplomacy and Security

The final pillar outlines strategies for projecting American AI leadership globally. It emphasizes exporting American AI technology, including hardware, models, software and applications, to allies and partners to counter the influence of rivals. This involves establishing programs within the Department of Commerce to facilitate full-stack AI export packages.

The plan also aims to counter Chinese influence in international governance bodies by vigorously advocating for AI governance approaches that promote innovation and reflect American values.

“China is a competitor and others are competitors. We want it to be in this country, and we’re making it available. I’m going to help a lot through emergency declarations, because we have an emergency. We have to get this stuff built,” Trump said in January in announcing AI executive orders.

Strengthening AI compute export control enforcement and plugging loopholes in existing semiconductor manufacturing export controls are critical to denying adversaries access to advanced AI resources.

“AI is going to accelerate innovation … we are in an AI arms race with China, and the thing that’s holding us back is energy,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in June. “We’re reshoring manufacturing back to our country … it’s going to require more power, and we need a whole-of-government approach.”

The administration’s plan frames AI and emerging technologies as gateways to an “industrial revolution, information revolution and renaissance — all at once.” With clear directives for agencies like DOD, NSF and many others, the plan signals near-term policy execution.

“The most important thing, when you think about applying an AI strategy across the agencies, is to think very carefully and critically about what the individual missions of the various agencies are and align the policy actions associated with the strategy to the mission,” Kratsios said in February.