Donald Trump signs order ‘banning’ US tech companies from freely releasing AI models like the one that ‘scared’ many

President Donald Trump signed an executive order asking leading artificial intelligence (AI) companies to voluntarily hand over their most powerful AI models for government cybersecurity testing before releasing them to the public. The move marks a significant U-turn for the Trump administration as it actively discouraged individual US states from passing their own strict AI regulations.However, mounting national security fears in Washington over ultra-advanced new systems, such as Anthropic’s “Mythos” model, have forced the administration to take a bigger active role in monitoring the fast-evolving technology, as per a report by news agency Reuters.The order says that AI companies shall “provide the Federal Government with access to covered frontier models, subject to appropriate confidentiality, cybersecurity, insider-risk, and intellectual-property protection, use, and nondisclosure requirements, for a period of up to 30 days before they plan to release such models to other trusted partners; and collaborate with the Federal Government to select trusted partners that will have early access to covered frontier models to promote secure innovation and strengthen the cybersecurity of critical infrastructure.”The newly-released executive order directs several major federal departments, including Treasury, Defense, Commerce, and Homeland Security, to establish voluntary testing agreements with top tech firms.Under the new framework, government cybersecurity experts would get a 30-day window to rigorously test the AI models for digital vulnerabilities and safety flaws before those models can be shipped to outside businesses or the general public.“Within 30 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the National Cyber Director, the Secretary of War, through the Director of the National Security Agency (NSA), and the Secretary of Homeland Security, through the Director of CISA, shall form an AI cybersecurity clearinghouse, in voluntary collaboration with the AI industry and operators of critical infrastructure, that coordinates and deconflicts scanning for software vulnerabilities, discovers and validates such vulnerabilities, and coordinates and prioritizes remediation and distribution of vulnerability patches,” the order said.Tech giants are already at the table. A senior US official confirmed that executives from Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic met with government representatives to discuss the framework while the executive order was being drafted, Reuters said.