What Is the National AI Action Plan?

On July 23, 2025, the White House released "Winning the Race: America's AI Action Plan," encompassing more than 90 federal policy actions and outlining the administration's comprehensive and aggressive approach to securing U.S. dominance in artificial intelligence. The plan represents a significant departure from the previous administration's safety-first, risk-based regulatory posture in favor of a deregulated and industry-partnered environment.

The AI Action Plan was drafted by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), which coordinated with advisers across the federal government and solicited input from the private sector. It follows President Trump's January 23, 2025, Executive Order 14179, "Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence."

The AI Action Plan is built on three core pillars: Accelerating AI Innovation, Building American AI Infrastructure, and Leading in International AI Diplomacy and Security.

Three foundational principles guide the entire plan:

• Empowering American Workers by ensuring they benefit from AI-driven opportunities rather than being displaced by them.
• Incorporating First Amendment protections into AI development as a foundational design principle.
• Promoting open-source and open-weight AI by expanding computing access for startups and academic researchers and partnering with leading tech companies to broaden access to models, data, and software tools.

The Three Pillars: Innovation, Infrastructure, and Diplomacy

Pillar One: Accelerating AI Innovation

The plan calls for investments in federal research and development for foundational AI models and expands access to secure testbeds for real-world deployment. It supports open-source and open-weight model development, and expands AI-related workforce initiatives including K-12 education, reskilling, and apprenticeships.

The plan directs federal agencies to cut back on regulations that unnecessarily hinder AI development or deployment and to review and evaluate any enforcement actions that could slow AI innovation. It suggests that federal funding may be restricted for states that have burdensome AI regulations in place, signaling a clear preference for less restrictive regulatory environments.

The plan also commits to investing in AI interpretability, control, and robustness research. It acknowledges that the inner workings of frontier AI systems are poorly understood, and that this lack of predictability makes it challenging to use advanced AI in defense, national security, or other applications where lives are at stake.

Pillar Two: Building American AI Infrastructure

This is the most physically ambitious section of the plan. The plan covers expanding energy generation and grid capacity, accelerating the construction of data centers and semiconductor facilities, securing AI-relevant infrastructure from foreign threats, and building a skilled domestic workforce to operate and maintain these systems.

Key infrastructure priorities include:

• Streamlined permitting for data centers, semiconductor manufacturing facilities, and energy infrastructure, including a new categorical exclusion under the National Environmental Policy Act and use of federal lands for data center construction.
• Restoration of American semiconductor manufacturing by removing extraneous policy requirements for CHIPS Act-funded projects and streamlining regulations that slow manufacturing efforts.
• Creation of new technical standards for high-security AI data centers for military and intelligence community usage.
• Building partnerships with state and local governments to support industry-driven training programs for a skilled AI workforce.
• Development of a healthy financial market for AI compute, drawing inspiration from spot and forward markets for commodities such as oil and natural gas, to enable broader access without requiring direct contracts with hyperscalers.

Pillar Three: International AI Diplomacy and Security

Pillar III positions international AI diplomacy as essential to maintaining American technological dominance, with China explicitly identified as the primary strategic competitor across multiple domains. The strategy encompasses what the plan describes as "technology diplomacy," using AI capabilities and partnerships as tools of geopolitical influence.

The plan recommends establishing a full-stack AI export strategy that provides hardware, models, software, applications, and standards to allies while restricting the flow of AI compute to rivals. Federal agencies are encouraged to develop new export controls on chips and semiconductor manufacturing subsystems while aligning protection measures globally.

The plan directs the U.S. to counter Chinese influence in international AI governance bodies and advocate for innovation-friendly, American values-based standards, while strengthening export controls on advanced AI compute and semiconductor manufacturing.

China and the United States are advancing fundamentally different visions of AI's role in the world. For China, AI is geopolitical infrastructure, centralized, sovereign, and aligned with its Belt and Road-style diplomacy. It emphasizes sovereign compute power, data control, and state-led development.

Deregulation, Criticism, and What Comes Next

The AI Action Plan states that AI systems must be designed with freedom of speech and expression as foundational principles and recommends that the National Institute of Standards and Technology revise its AI Risk Management Framework by removing references to misinformation, DEI, and climate change.

That particular directive has drawn scrutiny from researchers who argue it weakens the scientific integrity of risk frameworks. Critics note the plan prioritizes speed over safeguards in several areas.

America's AI Action Plan presents a rigorous outline to promote U.S. dominance in AI through a combined emphasis on deregulatory actions, infrastructure modernization, and increased U.S. AI diplomatic leadership throughout the world. Stakeholders should closely monitor the implementation of these policies and proactively align compliance, investment, and partnership strategies to capitalize on emerging opportunities and mitigate associated risks.

While the AI Action Plan identifies extensive policy positions in a variety of areas, the administration's AI strategy will continue to evolve in an effort to keep pace with AI's rapid development.