President Trump’s “Winning the Race: America’s AI Action Plan,” published on 23 July 2025, stakes out a goal of “unquestioned and unchallenged” technological dominance and marks a decisive break with the prior administration’s guardrail-first stance. The plan follows the repeal of Biden’s 2023 executive order on safe, secure and trustworthy Artificial Intelligence and the 2022 Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights, while implementing the January 25 order on removing barriers to American leadership in Artificial Intelligence. Despite some continuity on scaling domestic firms, government adoption and permitting reform, the new strategy is strikingly techno-optimist, consistently prioritizing innovation over risk mitigation.
The Action Plan outlines 90 policy recommendations across three pillars: accelerating innovation, building Artificial Intelligence infrastructure and leading international Artificial Intelligence diplomacy and security. It is paired with three executive orders. “Preventing Woke AI in the Federal Government” directs agencies to procure large language models deemed truth-seeking and ideologically neutral rather than those perceived to favor diversity, equity and inclusion. “Accelerating Federal Permitting of Data Center Infrastructure” seeks to fast-track data center construction by effectively waiving broad environmental rules, offering grants to the wealthiest tech companies and even making federal land available. “Promoting the Export of the American AI Technology Stack” aims to finance and promote United States Artificial Intelligence exports to bolster diplomatic leadership and decrease reliance on systems from adversarial countries.
Framing Artificial Intelligence as a political, social and economic superweapon, the plan envisions its role in both culture wars and geopolitical competition. It contains few measures that check the power of large technology companies. The analysis criticizes this pivot as eroding the long-standing federal support model that helped make the United States a leader in Artificial Intelligence, from early programs in the 1950s through subsequent breakthroughs in machine learning, neural networks, computer vision and natural language processing.
Domestically, the strategy’s federalism posture raises significant constitutional and administrative law concerns. It inverts cooperative federalism by attaching funding conditions not authorized by Congress, invites agencies such as the Federal Communications Commission to preempt state Artificial Intelligence regulations without clear statutory grounding and threatens core federalism principles with ambiguous, potentially coercive funding restrictions that could curtail states’ ability to protect residents.
Internationally, the plan contrasts sharply with approaches in China and the European Union. Days after the plan’s release, Chinese premier Li Qiang used the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai to propose a new organization for global coordination, warning that governance is fragmented and urging consensus that balances development with security risks. The EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act, by comparison, adopts a risk-based framework that bans certain uses, strictly supervises high-risk applications and mandates transparency for limited-risk systems. Often described as a gold standard for responsible governance, the EU model stands as a direct competitor to the Trump administration’s speed-and-deregulation agenda, which the article warns could deepen the oligarchization of United States politics through the personalization of power and the influence of elite interests.
